Extras

Credits

February 29, 2008

What relationship?

Young Jack came over at 2:00 this afternoon, right after I finished cutting my grass. "Is Quinton here yet," he asked. I told him that Quinton wasn't due to arrive until 6:00. "Can I call him and see if he can come over early?"

I said, "Sure. Use my phone." He did.

He talked to my ex-wife and he talked to Quinton. The end result was that he was welcome to come over THERE, but Quinton could not come over HERE until 6:00. I was very pissed about that conversation.

After Jack hung up the phone, I called my ex-wife. "This is a holiday," I said. "I know that Jack and Quinton want to play together, so what is this 6:00 crap you're laying on both of them?" She hissed something about having Michael over and how she couldn't just toss him out in the street (although she had no problem doing exactly that to ME), until his mom picked him up at 5:00. I said, okay, I'll be there at 6:00.

Jack rode with me. He talks a lot about his daddy, but he spends more time with me than he does with his father. I really like that kid. Jack has three sisters and he needs to smell some testosterone every now and then. He comes to my house for that. He also makes a good friend for Quinton and I let those boys be boys.

As long as I don't end up taking one of them to the Emergency Room for stitches or a cast, I think I'm doing all right. Together, they are a wild bunch, but boys are supposed to be that way. They listen when they go too far and I say, "CUT THE CRAP! STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT, OR I'M GOING TO MAKE HAMBURGER OUTTA YOUR BUTTS!" They get really quiet when I do that.

I never have spanked Jack, but I laid an ass-tenderizer on Quinton shortly after I moved into the Crackerbox. I think that he wanted to see whether or not I WOULD after the divorce and all, so I showed him. Jack witnessed.

Those boys mind me.

When I picked Quinton up this evening, the ex apologized for being her typical shitty self. "My gut instinct is to fight with you every time I hear your voice. I'm trying to change that," she said. I told her that she still had a lot of work to do and took the boys away.

They make really good company because they are boys, young enough to be fun but old enough to be... well, FUN. I'm off to cook a cheese pizza now. They are hungry.

I need a break

I fed the boys shrimp eggrolls and instant rice for lunch today. It wasn't half-bad. They had the been-inside-too-long crawlies, so I tossed them out into the front yard and told them to go play. They wanted ME to quarterback a football game for them.

Pardon the pun, but I PASSED on that offer. If I tried to throw a football right now, I fear that my overburdened nutsack would hit the ground and never reel back up again. I would have to live the rest of my life dragging that thing behind me everywhere I went, picking up ant-bites and sand-spurs along the way. No, thank you.

I want to take a wookie pill and relax on the couch for a while.

If they are back inside within five minutes, I'm going to kill all three of them.

I do it

I tell my son that I love him. I'm pretty sure he knows it, but I tell him anyway, just to make sure.

He came in all sweaty and dirty from playing football in the yard today and asked for something to drink. I said, "There's your cup. You know where the ice and the water are." He fixed himself a drink and came to sit next to me.

"Whatcha watchin, daddy?"

"The greatest sports photographs of all time, or something like that on HBO."

"Is it good?"

"It beats having a tooth pulled."

He leaned against me and sipped his ice water. His hand found its way to my shoulder while he watched what I was watching. I waited for him to set the cup on the coffee table before I grabbed him in a bear-hug and bearded his cheek. He started giggling and squirming.

"I LOVE YOU, young man!" I said, as I gave him a juicy Wet Willie with lots of slobber.

"I love you TOO, daddy!" he giggled. "Now LET ME GO!" I took an elbow to the head, but I paid him back with a goosing to the armpit while I was careful to protect my tender genitals.

"Who is TALL DOG?" I demanded.

"YOU ARE," he replied.

"What are the magic words?"

"YOU ARE TALL DOG! SIR, yes, SIR!"

I let him go after that. He finished his water and went back outside to play. But he stopped in the front doorway on the way out and said, "I LIED! I AM TALL DOG! BWHAHAHAHAH!!!" Then, he slammed the door and ran away.

That's my boy.

My father never told me that he loved me. I know that he did, but he never said it. He SHOWED it, but he never spoke those words to me.

February 28, 2008

I didn't think he had it in him

I WILL be damned. Laurence Simon wrote a post about me that showed a side of him that he usually keeps cloaked. [Blog no longer exists.- Ed.] I am delighted that he did it, but he makes me sound like some kind of saint. I ain't that. I've done everything I've done for purely selfish reasons.

Besides, anybody who reads my blog should NEVER be surprised that I am open and candid about things that happen in my life. That's what the blog is about, and it's been that way since the beginning. Yeah... visit here and I let you peek in my underwear drawer.

Prostate cancer and a painful divorce were not fun to live through. Learning to stick a hypodermic needle in my dick to generate an erection was not fun to live through. Seeing my son twice every month was not fun to live WITH, But I blogged about every bit of it. That's what I do.

When I decided to have my operation, I did a lot of checking around first. I learned a lot. I didn't walk into this with no clue about where I was going. I knew where I DID NOT want to be, and that's where I WAS. I found an exit sign. I wanted out of there.

So far, it appears that I made a damn good decision. I'll know for sure in about four more weeks. And when I find out for sure, I'll blog about THAT, too.

Now he tells me

Sir,
I realize that a number of us who have had the penile implant operation have encouraged you to "go for it" and have told you that "it ain't no big thang" and probably other encouraging bromides, we weren't really lying, we just didn't emphasize certain post surgical after affects in order to avoid the possibility of exaggerating the amount of pain and misery of having the underside of your nut sack and Roscoe sliced up almost their total length. I didn't realize what was involved until I used a hand mirror to look at the under side of the wedding tackle, "U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi!"

Any way you are now a member of the Norse god club for the next month, cause you are going to be very THOR, MIGHTY THOR, extremely THOR, and on top of that, any sympathy you will get will be strained through giggles and muffled guffaws. An analogy would be the incident whereupon my cousin while out hunting with some companions set his gun down safely to take a leak and when a friend of his said "Hey! Look!" turned and peed upon an electric cattle fence. He told me " It wasn't so much that it knocked me flat on my back, it wasn't so much that I while I was laying there I was still peeing uncontrollably, my dick seemed to have shrunk to a one inch nub, and I was so shaky I could only make feeble and uncontrolled attempts to grab hold of it, it was the fact that my buddies were standing and rolling around pointing and laughing uncontrollably in my moment of pain and embarrassment."

I have a big day planned

I need to clean my house, cut my grass, change the oil in my truck, go to the grocery store and pick up my son today. I should be energized as I write... BUT...

* It started to rain a few minutes ago. I went outside to feel the rain on my semi-nekkid body. As soon as I stepped out the door, the rain stopped. I went back inside after that.

* If I am ever reincarnated, I want to come back as a dog. I want to spend my entire life sleeping 16 hours every day, pissing on bushes when I feel like it and licking my own balls most of my waking hours. That's a good life.

* If I am ever reincarnated, I don't want to come back as a mosquito. They don't live long around the Crackerbox. Do mosquitoes have balls?

* I have a dead battery in my driveway. Will it be reincarnated? Will it come back as a 9-volt next time?

* This is Easter weekend. Today is Good Friday. If you study the story, Jesus died today and was reincarnated as HIMSELF on Sunday. If I am reincarnated, I don't want to come back as myself again. Been there, done that. I don't want to do it again. I want to be a dog next time around.

* That stupid Chihuahua next door was very bad in a previous life. It came back as a large rat that thinks it's a dog. I should have let the ants have it last summer. Dumbass, barking, piss-all-over-itself critter.

* If I can't be a dog in my next life, I want to be a good-looking woman. I'll give the word "slut" an entire new meaning.

* Sometimes in the woods, you need toilet paper more than you need food. But I don't want to be reincarnated as a roll of Charmin. Been there, done that. Once is enough.

* If I die and go to hell, I want a seat next to the fire. And a tall glass of lemonade. With ice.

I am an idiot

I have two boys playing ultra-violent video games in the Crackerbox and I just dosed them both with caffiene-saturated Mountain Dew and sugar-drenched honey buns. They were bouncing off the walls BEFORE I fed them that shit. The energy level has ratcheted up a few notches since then.

I may have made a big mistake.

I'm just trying to figure out how to syphon some of that energy off them and feed it to myself. I feel like an old fart. They don't.

February 27, 2008

Explain it to me

I'm not sure what is Jane's point with this comment she left about the nutball who gunned down a bunch of his coworkers:[Blog post no longer seems to exist.- Ed.]

Pretty easy to ignore the fact that the guy was a raging racist and shouldn't have been in the workplace in the first damn place, isn't it.

Well, I WOULDN'T ignore such an obvious problem. But I'm judgmental and bigoted and I don't like to sing "Kumbaya." I am a perfect example of EVERYTHING that's wrong with bosses today. I would have fired his disruptive ass months ago for the good of the company and the good of the crew he worked with.

But you can't do that today, and YOU, Jane, and your bleeding-heart friends are responsible for every one of those deaths. That guy should have BEEN GONE. But he was sent to "Anger Management Class" instead. I am certain that "Conflict Resolution" and "What Fish Are You?" classes were bound to follow, and if ONLY he had the chance to become comfortable with personal empowerment, none of this would have happened.

My way: Fire the bastard.

YOUR WAY: REASON with him, train him, love him.

My way: Fuck him. Get that bastard out of here.

YOUR WAY: Love can build a bridge. You and your kind BUILT a bridge for these people. As a result, he crosses that bridge, brings guns to work and kills a lot of people. THEN you blame his acts on racism.

Yeah, somebody should have seen this coming. But it would NEVER be YOU, Jane. And if I voiced any concern at work about a similar situation, I would be told to watch my step. I could lose my job by "harrassing" that guy.

That's the world you leftist idiots have created. I hope you are proud of it.

Half rubber

No, this title does not refer to a downsized device for birth control and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. "Half rubber" was a game I played many a time on beaches, in in open back yards, and sometimes in the street when I was growing up.

I haven't played the game in years. What's REALLY strange is that I haven't seen anyone ELSE playing for years, either.

The game required a broomstick, three people, a rubber ball and a knife. You used the knife to cut the rubber ball in half. You used the broomstick as a bat. You used the three people as Pitcher, Batter and Catcher.

The pitcher sailed that half-rubber toward the plate, and a good, fast pitch would curve, rise and dance like a demonic horsefly along the way. If the batter hit the half-ball, he had a man on first. If he knocked it over the pitcher's head, he had a home run.

If the batter swung the broomstick and missed, he was OUT if the catcher caught the ball. If the catcher couldn't catch it (which happened frequently--a half-rubber is a tricky bastard to throw, hit or catch) the batter just kept swinging until the catcher finally managed to snag a strike. Then, batter went to pitch, catcher went to hit and pitcher went to catch.

I played that game for hours on many a summer's day.

Legend says that the game was invented on Tybee Island at Savannah Beach, although the lying shits in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina occasionally make a bogus claim of their own. It was invented here where I live.

I just wonder why I don't see anybody playing half rubber anymore. It really is fun and it takes only three people for a game.

I never would have thought about this subject if mr. southern nostalgia hadn't posted about it himself. Damn, he has a good memory.

Half-assed

I know a lot of people who carry only half the ass they once did, thanks to Dr. Robert Atkins' diet. The diet may remain "controversial" in scientific circles, but I've seen it work too many times to doubt it myself.

Anyway, he's dead now from falling on his head. He didn't ban ice from his diet.

I think I'll eat some fatty protein to salute his memory today. A nice, marbled rib-eye steak sounds about right.

Training

The people I work for believe in training. They believe in "Managing Diversity" and they believe in "Sexual Harassment-- No Place for it in the Workplace." They also believe in "Dealing with Hostile Employees," "Conflict Management," "Creating the Win-Win Situation" and "Building Successful Teams."

Throw in "Effective Planning," "Facilitation Skills," "Leadership Skills" and "How to Wipe Your Ass the Company Way" and you get the picture of the kind of training I receive regularly. I really never get much out of ANY of those classes except for a free lunch. That's why I am delighted that I've never been forced into a "Anger Management" class.

The man who went on a deadly shooting rampage at a Lockheed Martin plant, killing five coworkers and wounding nine before killing himself, went through an anger management program a year and a half ago after problems on the job, the company president said Wednesday.

Douglas Williams, 48, made "threatening remarks" against a black co-worker in December 2001, said Dain Hancock, the president of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company. He wouldn't say what the remarks were.

After the incident, Williams was ordered to attend a two-week anger management program at a local outpatient mental health facility, Hancock said. Williams was then cleared to return to work.

That worked like a charm, didn't it? The "group hug" bullshit that passes for training today on "sensitive" issues usually does.

I've never seen ANYBODY "born again" after attending such training. I HAVE, however, seen people who walked out with a chip on their shoulder after being told that singing "Kumbaya" with a shitty employee is the ideal way to handle a problem in the workplace. That's bullshit, and nobody but some buttlick in a coat and tie who NEVER saw a shop floor in his life would suggest such a ridiculious idea.

February 25, 2008

Home early

The training class ended at 1:30 this afternoon, I went to pick up my new derringer and I am home before 5:00 for a change.

Woo-hoo!

I shook hands with the CEO of my company before breakfast this morning and he chatted me up as if we were old friends. He knew what job I held, my son's first name and how long I had worked there.

That's why you are required to wear a name tag at these meetings. The CEO receives a short bio for everyone in the room (all 30 of them) and he memorizes them all just for this kind of small talk. It's impressive as hell to watch him do what he does. He might not be able to pick my face out of a crowd of three people, but when he saw that name tag, he knew what to say to Rob Smith, just as he did with every other person in the room.

Strange things I do

After breakfast with the CEO today, he held a question and answer session. He does that every time he visits one of the production sites he governs and he has rules for this exchange. He brings out a baseball and asks if today is anyone's birthday. If today isn't someone's birthday, he goes for the next upcoming birthday and tosses that person the ball. You'd better catch it.

If you catch the ball, you get (ARE REQUIRED) to ask the CEO the most important question on your mind about the company. If you DROP THE BALL, he reaches under the table, picks up a beach ball with a map of the globe on it, and tosses THAT ball to you. Catch it, and you get (ARE REQUIRED) to ask him two questions. Drop the beach ball and you get to ask THREE questions.

This was a "communications session," which is a really good idea, although it can be most intimidating in that format. This guy is the MOTHER OF ALL BOSSES where I work, and he is the MOTHER OF ALL BOSSES around the globe in his company empire. He is not a person you wish to piss off for no good reason.

After the CEO answers YOUR question, you are required to announce the name of another person in the room and toss the baseball to him or her. I had five good questions written down on paper before I entered the room this morning. I've been to one of these sessions before and I know that if you don't get the ball early, someone else will ask your "good" question and you will be stuck, sitting there with a thumb up your ass, when the ball comes your way. I took precautions to assure that I WOULD NOT be caught with a thumb up my ass in front of the CEO of my company.

I had a deal with my friend and fellow coordinator, Leo, that if the ball came to me, I would call him next, and if it came to him, he would do the same for me. You really want to get this shit over with before all the good questions are asked. Plus, we can both toss and catch.

Leo got the ball first. He asked his question and got about a 10-minute reply from the CEO. It was a good question. Then, he said, "Okay, ROB!," and tossed the ball to me. I caught it.

I may write a blog entry about the question I asked and the answer I got, because it involves Iraq and oil prices. My company is heavily invested in Oil and Gas as one of it's core businesses. The CEO is an old wildcat oilman. He spoke about 20 minutes on my topic and I was very comforted by what he had to say.

I own a lot of stock in my company.

Then, it was my turn to toss the baseball to someone else. I stood up. I don't know what came over me, because almost everybody in the room (a few imports from cross-country may have been out of the loop, but the CEO and everyone else there knew that I was in the room with my ex-wife-- they had seated her as far away from me as possible) but I saw her, looking away from me, but still at a perfect throwing angle.

I said, "Jennifer!" She turned my way, surprised, and I gave her a nice, easy, underhanded toss that she caught. "Good catch," I said, and sat down. She gave me the strangest look from those beautiful blue eyes of hers, then turned and asked the CEO her question.

After the meeting was over, I went outside to smoke a cigarette and she walked up to me. She looked puzzled.

"Why did you do that?" she asked.

"Do what?" I responded, while she lit a cigarette of her own.

"Throw the ball to me and make it easy to catch," she said.

"You were easy to throw to where you were sitting. Plus, I know that everybody likes to get their questions in early before somebody else steals them. Call it Professional Courtesy."

"Rob, you did it because that's YOU. You ALWAYS try to do the last thing anybody expects you to do. That was your way of telling the whole room to kiss your ass, wasn't it? I should have known you would throw me the ball. That was SO YOU! (Did I mention that I wanted everybody in the room to KNOW that I could handle being there with my ex-wife? Did I mention that I threw the ball the HER because that was the LAST THING anybody expected me to do? Sorry. I should have mentioned that.))

"By the way, I need you on a team I'm forming to track steam usage and costs in the plant. I would never have been tasked with this job if I hadn't listened to you talk about it for years. That's how I know what I know. But I don't know what YOU know. If it makes you uncomfortable, you can say no, but I really need your knowledge on this team."

Oh, the things I should have said! Oh, the things I THOUGHT ABOUT saying! But I didn't do any of that. This was about work. I said, "If it's about steam, you know I'm in. Other than Zeigler, who else in the plant knows diddly-squat about it? And I taught him most of what HE knows."

We ate lunch together. I enjoyed that. It was really nice to talk to her again, in complete civility, even if it was all strictly business. I have as much passion for my work as she does for hers. We've always had that in common.

But I remain an ex-husband to her. I am a "resource" and a "subject matter expert," for this project, and that's it. But I'll be exactly that if she needs me to do that job. She knows where to go to find the right people to make herself look good, but I wouldn't turn down the assignment if it came from someone else.

I'll do it. That's my job.

But somebody in my comments nailed the situation just right. I don't hate her. I still love her. And I will for a long, long time.

It's what I believe

If something terrible ever happens to me to put me into 19-year coma after which I wake up a quadriplegic, I'll want to get out of that bed just to KILL whoever kept me there that long. I mean that.

I believe in quality of life more than just breathing. I don't want to be alive if all I can do is whimper, "milk." Why the hell do you think I went through the shit I just did to get a bionic dick?

I still think of myself as a vigorous man with many good years ahead of me. But if I were condemned to spend them bedridden or limp-dicked and lonely, what good ARE those years? I don't want my son EVER to watch me die the way my father died.

The man I admired most on the face of this planet went out with tubes and catheters stuck in him while he clawed for every last breath. He died ignominously, and I never got over witnessing that sight. I won't do that, and I damn sure won't let my son ever SEE me doing that.

I want Quinton to remember ME the way I think of myself. Strong. Wise. Able. I want him to remember that I taught him how to throw a football, and I taught him how to swim and I taught him how to be a man. I taught him how to shoot a rifle and walk tall and to do what needs to be done. I want to teach him to be tough.

I can't do that by being a shadow of what I once was and leaving THAT PICTURE of me in his mind when I finally cash my chips. Yeah, I wanted the bionic dick for me. But I wanted it more to BE WHAT I KNOW I AM. I was TIRED of being impotent. That was a heavy weight to carry for a man like me. I may NEVER screw (okay... I WILL) with my implant, but just knowing that I CAN means a lot.

I am rambling, but I want to be someone my son looks up to, just the way I did to my daddy. And I don't want to EVER let him down the way my father did me. I had something broken and I fixed it. I did it to make ME feel whole again and I can be a better father to my son because of it. It was a mind thing, but it bothered me a lot.

Yeah, I did the get out of the hospital in six hours and drive myself home today stuff just to PROVE THAT I COULD. I did because most people either can't or won't. I have NEVER been like "most people." I wouldn't have it any other way.

My father taught me to be tough. I once thought that he WAS TOUGH, but he didn't die that way, and I'll always wonder how much bullshit he spooned into my head with the "do as I say, not as I do" crap.

I don't want Quinton EVER to wonder about such things when he thinks of ME. I want to show him. I want him NEVER to have any doubts.

February 24, 2008

Foods I like that most people don't

Yeah, I eat this stuff regularly and it's never even made me sick, let alone killed me:

Raw Oysters! I love the salty, marshy, seafood taste of a raw oyster when I crack one and suck it down my throat. You don't chew those things. You just swallow and enjoy the aftertaste.

Raw Eggs! I like to crack three of four in a glass, whip them up with some salt, pepper and Tabasco Sauce and drink them in one or two big gulps. That's a breakfast of Champions.
Sweaty Wimmen! Never mind. I'm not going there tonight.
Raw Hamburger Meat! Okay, I'll cook the outside a little bit, but I like the middle raw. Cow's blood tastes good to me.

Garden Tomatoes! I like to pick 'em, wipe 'em off on my shirt sleeve and eat them like apples. I enjoy the juice running off my chin.

Sourgrass! If you don't know what that is, I can't explain it.

Hot-Assed Barbecued Pork! Ribs, butts, sidemeat or chops. I like it when I break a sweat eating it while it falls apart on my plate.

Sardines in a Can! Find yourself on a fishing trip when you're hungry enough to eat raw skunk and discover that sardines in a can are all you've got to eat. They are delicious in the right time and place. You'll lick the juice off the lid and drink the gut-oil out of the tin when that's all there is.

Cold Pork & Beans Right out of the Can! It's ambrosia when you're out of sardines.

Bore blogs

* I changed the battery in my truck in the middle of a rainstorm in the Wal-Mart parking lot last week. I left the old battery in the bed of my truck. It's been banging around back there like a wild caribou in heat every time I turned a corner for almost a week now. I took it out of my truck bed today. I got my hands dirty. I went inside to wash my hands and left the battery in the driveway.

* While I was washing my hands, I noticed that my house was dirty. I decided to blog.

* I noticed tonight that my back door hasn't been locked since Saturday. I may lock it tomorrow.

* I got up to do something, then went to find my reading glasses. I walked by a mirror and saw that I was wearing them. I was happy to find my glasses on my face. They weren't lost after all. I was.

* I don't have to be where I usually am in the morning until an hour later than I usually get there. Should I reset my alarm clock? If I do, I'll just have to reset it AGAIN tomorrow. I'm really confused about how to handle this problem.

* Think about the UGLIEST PERSON YOU EVER SAW. I can top whatever you came up with. That's one of the real detriments about living in a tourist town. Some really ugly people come here. I was taking a seminar at a tourist hotel. I saw a lot of ugly people during my breaks. Do ugly people have more money than pretty people? Just wonderin'.

* When they turned me upside-down by hand in that training class today, I liked it. But I don't like roller coasters. Why am I that convoluted in my thinking? I am a sick man.

* I don't want to be President of the United States. If I were, I would lobby for a recall vote, then veto it if it ever came to pass. THAT'LL fuck 'em up! Bwhahaha!

* I don't sleep much anymore, but I want to go to bed now. When I DID sleep a lot, I tried my best to stay awake as long I could. Those were the days. Now I go to bed early, wake up in the mornings and stay awake whether I want to or not. I TOLD you that I am confused.

Memories that hurt

One of the exercises that I participated in today (I volunteered for every goddam thing that came along.) Need a volunteer? YA GOT ONE! I usually don't do that, but I did today. By 1400, when Instructor Kate asked for a volunteer she looked directly at me, and I said "I'll do it!" yet again, the same as I had done all day. Kate thought I was a really gung-ho employee, totally with the program. She's probably going to miss me at the dinner tonight.

Actually, I was hoping to aviod being assigned to a team with my ex-wife.

They did a hostage rescue type operation that I volunteered for, before I knew that I would be the hostage. I was taken outside the ballroom, blindfolded and told to wait a few minutes. I did, and almost fell asleep while waiting, because this happened right after lunch. Darkness, quiet and comfort felt pretty good to me about then.

The scenario outside was that I was a VALUED CUSTOMER and everybody had to lead me across a sea of sharks and killer blowfish that were waiting to KILL ME. If I so much as got my feet wet in that imaginary ocean, I was dead and the company lost a customer. There were stepping stones set out and I was supposed to be guided to them in the dark, or else assisted by anyone who could touch me.

"Okay! Just take my hand!" I reached out and somebody grabbed my hand. "Now lift your left foot." I did and somebody grabbed it, steered it, plunked it down and said, "Step all your weight on your left foot and raise your right foot." I did, and somebody guided my right foot to the next stone. They worked me all the way across about 40' of stepping stones like that, with somebody holding my hand and other people moving my feet until I escaped whatever danger I supposedly was in.

I learned after I removed the blindfold that they had to lay out the stones from Point A to Point B, then pick 2' square positions from which they could not move to do this job. If they failed to plan and put me in a position where I did not have CUSTOMER SUPPORT, I was lost. They planned well, and I was saved.

But while everyone in the class had a hand on me in that exercise, I recognized one. She didn't guide my feet. About halfway down the walk, one person turned loose of my hand and another one took it.

Even blindfolded, I knew it was her. Immediately.

She didn't speak, but she didn't have to. I remember the touch of her hand and I know her scent. I almost fell into the "ocean" on purpose. But I didn't, because I was doing work-related activities, and I take my job seriously. It hurt like hell just the same.

I took the next step, went on to the next hand until the drill was done, and cheers were heard all around. Mission accomplished.

February 23, 2008

All ready

I have to attend a two-day training seminar starting tomorrow, so I finished my state taxes, figured out how to utilize the new printer/copier/scanner I bought two weeks ago and made copies of everything. I made more copies than I needed just because I think my printer is really neat. THAT'S a cool piece of office equipment for $100.

I have all my tax shit in one sock so that I can drop it off at the post office tomorrow morning on the way to class. I really don't like to wait to the last minute in most things I do, but paying my taxes is different. I would just as soon not do it at all. I owe the Feds $40, but I'm getting $360 back from the state (I always underwithold from those thieves. They can't be trusted.) That's more than enough to pay for the derringer I'm buying tomorrow. In fact, I think I'm going to see if Mack has a nice target pistol to go along with it, or I might ask for something very few people will understand.

I want a single-shot, bolt-action .22 rifle, just for nostalgia's sake. That's the first kind of gun my daddy ever let me shoot, and when I became proficient with it, and could handle it safely, he let me go off into the woods with it all by myself.

If you've never gone down to the riverbank with a single-shot .22 and pocketsfull of bullets, then searched through the trash people threw down there to select light bulbs, Miller pony bottles and Barbie-Doll heads, then set those targets up on a fallen oak-trunk and picked 'em off one at a time, you haven't lived. Especially after you had to operate the bolt and stick another bullet in the breech after every shot.

And if you never turned around and plugged fiddler crabs in the marsh mud after that, you damn sure weren't a Southern boy. At least not from South Georgia. Fiddler crabs were small targets and they MOVED! You had to be a good shot to hit them, one shot at a time. That one shot at a time thing wouldn't be a bad idea for Quinton right now.

That stuff teaches you the discipline to make every shot count. It slows life down enough that father and son can communicate better. I want a single-shot, bolt-action .22. I want it because it was a part of my youth, and I want it because my son doesn't need sixteen rounds in a rifle. If I leave him alone with that Marlin, he'll be shooting from the hip as fast as he can pull the trigger like some character on a video game and hiting nothing because he won't know how to aim.

I want a young BOY'S GUN. I want it for for me, but for MY BOY, too. If Mack doesn't have one, he can order it for me. But I remember seeing TWO old ones when I picked out the derringer. I'll bet that he hasn't sold them both.

What I don't like about where I live

We've had one of those pesky "Bermuda Highs" hovering off the coast for about the past five days. It churns clockwise and pumps the weather you'd expect in Key West right into Southeast Georgia, except it leaves out the breeze.

The air is thick and humid. The temperature is 91 degrees, but the heat index is 15 degrees higher. The smokestacks at work just go straight up into the air and die there, as if they forgot where they were supposed to blow. Everybody gets cranky because sweat doesn't evaporate under those conditions. It just forms a poison running all over your body and it goes straight to your brain. When you are DRIPPING with it, you are not a pleasant person to be around.

I love living down South, because I have enough wonderful spring-fall-winter weather to make me forget about these miserable, sweaty summers until they descend on me again. Then, I must declare that I live next-door to the Gates of Hell. Shit. When the weather gets like THIS, even Satan will offer you a glass of iced tea.

Training day

I dropped off my tax returns at the post office at 0630 this morning. The only reason that I didn't crawl up there and shit down the slot where I put the envelopes is that I couldn't figure out how to assume the proper position. Otherwise, I would have. Take THAT from me TOO, Uncle Sam.

I arrived at the Desoto Hilton at 0645, fifteen minutes ahead of when I was instructed to be there. I wasn't warned about the hour-long breakfast that followed. I don't eat breakfast at 0700 in the morning unless I've been up drinking all night long. I ate a chunk of pineapple and a piece of stringy bacon that stayed stuck between my molars all day, then smoked cigarettes outside while everybody else enjoyed their leasurely repast.

We finally started class at 0800. That's when I saw the untimate insult to my sanity show up at exactly 0801, when everybody else was already one minute into the classroom session.

My ex-wife entered the room and sat down.

Yes, my company thoughtfully scheduled BOTH OF US to attend "teamwork, trust and leadership" training together. Seeing her there put me right off that "teamwork and trust" part of the day.

That episode in Chinese Water Torture lasted until 1800 this evening, whereupon I skipped out on the "happy hour" in the Hospitality Suite and the Group Dinner at 1900. Fuck that.

Needless to say, caught in the Savannah traffic, I was unable to make it to Mack's Gun Shop before closing time, so I can't get my derringer until tomorrow, when all the bullshit is supposed to be over by 1430, so that people the company flew in from out of town to be here can catch their planes home.

Things I did today:

I volunteered to become a Human Gyroscope and be spun 360 degrees, head over heels by my group and set back on the floor in one piece. The only person in our group who weighed less than I do was female, and she didn't want all those hands on her body. I said that I would be the gyroscope. After they successfully twirled me, to demonstrate my trust in my team members, I did it again holding a glass of water. Not only did I not spill a drop, but the guy from HR who was videotaping our games missed it, so I did it AGAIN without spilling a drop. Actually it was kinda fun, even though all the change fell out of my pockets the first time I went upside down.

I would NOT have volunteered for that hazardous duty had my ex-wife been part of my support group.

I learned to carry a set and ready to spring mousetrap all the way across a large ballroom and set it down on a table while using nothing but a table spoon to handle the job. There is a trick to that task, which I finally figured out after dropping a few mousetraps and having them snap at me from the floor. I think I toted about 30 in a row after I learned the secret through trial and error.

My ex-wife WAS part of that exercise, and once I figured out how to carry a loaded mouse trap, I thought seriously about having a tripping incident and seeing if I couldn't "accidentally" hit her in the face with a trap. But I didn't.

I also learned that these all-day classroom and game-playing exercises make me more tired than a regular 10-hour shift at work. My butt hurts, my head hurts and I am exhausted. Plus, I missed getting my gun today because of that crap.

I have to be back at 0700 tomorrow to have breakfast with the CEO of the company. Thirty people attended the seminar today, and I couldn't aviod dealing with my ex-wife in that situation. The breakfast is going to be "interactive," so I probably won't manage to hide from the CEO, either. He likes to have his employees ask him questions. I'm trying to think of a couple of good ones now.

"Why do you spend perfectly good company money sending me to assinine exercises such as this, that I HATE attending, then schedule my bloodless cunt of an ex-wife, who I ALSO HATE, to the same session? Do YOU hate ME?"

I told 'em

I told my boss about my operation several weeks ago, and he really didn't want to know any details. "When will you be back?" was his main concern. When I told him, "Monday," he was satisfied. I had worked long and hard getting everything in order for my absence.

When I told my maintenance engineer that I wouldn't make a couple of meetings he called this week because I was having surgery, he asked, "I know it's none of my business, but is it serious?"

I told him that it was serious as a heart attack to ME.

He asked, "Does it have to do with the cancer?" He knows all about that.

I told him you're goddam right it does. That's when I said, "Mike, I'm getting a bionic dick. I'm going for the pump."

Mike is a mechanical engineer. This idea fascinated him. "How does that work?" he asked. The next thing you know, I'm drawing pictures on the eraser-marker board in my office to show him what I'm doing, just as if we were planning something at work.

He sent me an email today after I turned down an invitation to one of his meetings tomorrow. I replied, "Don't think I'll be there. I expect to be nursing a bruised... "personality" about that time tomorrow."

He wrote back: "I would wish you "break a leg" but "bust a nut" may be better advice. Good luck!"

February 22, 2008

Crappola

I arrrived at the hospital at 0925 today, and the day-surgery waiting room (which is about the size of a large restaurant) was so full of people that I couldn't find a place to sit. I filled out my registration card and leaned in the corner next to a potted plant until some family was called to see about a loved one and three seats were available. If I hadn't been close by to claim one, I would have been shit out of luck, because a stampede ensued.

I looked at the people stiill standing. I didn't see any elderly wimmen or infirm men, so I didn't give up my seat. (I WOULD HAVE for an elderly woman. I was raised that way.) An infirm man should just have the good grace to DIE, if he can't stand up on his own, in MY humble opinion.

Why do you think I'm having this operation?

I sat there listening to a couple of true environmentalists, bedecked in fine clothes and wearing the kind of male jewelry that only rich, retired, Hilton-Head-living, golf-club membership-toting, out-of-the-loop dimwits speak. They are retired and have a boodle full of money. They criticize people who cut down trees, now that their three golf courses are built. They mourn the loss of the Red Snapper off-coast, because the all waters have been "fished-out."

Bullshit. The last time those creaky old farts ever fished for snapper was probably 40 years ago and I caught six keepers last summer. My maintenance engineer at work just gave me about 10 pounds of kingfish steaks that he caught while on vacation. He had TOO MANY fish for his freezer.

Tell me the waters are "fished out" after you GO FISH THEM. Talk about "saving the planet" when you move out of a planned community, abandon the golf course and live in a Unibomber hut. Talk to ME about people who "cut down trees and plow the ground for a garden, just because they like to cut down trees and destroy the earth." I fucking HATE people like that. What the hell did YOU ever grow in your life except OLD, you bastard?

I sat there listening to those two self-satisfied asswits until 1015, when I was called to the front desk. If I had been forced to listen to that shit the "environmentalists" were spouting for ten more minutes, I would be in jail for assault and battery tonight.

John Denver set the standard for that sort of idiocy. His motto was, "I got here first, I cut down MY trees, I built a mansion, and I don't want ANYBODY ELSE DOING WHAT I DID! So, I'm going to work on Saving the Earth, now that I'VE GOT MINE!!!"

What horseshit.... but, I digress.

I went to the desk and filled out duplicate copies of every goddam form they had from 21 months ago, except for a change of address and phone number. That process took 30 minutes because the (nurse? secretary? homeless person?) attempting to plug the information into the computer had a difficult time doing it. I wanted to leap the counter and do it for her.

But I put up with the crap because I really want this operation. I learned one simple thing while I was there. Since the government and insurance companies got involed in the health-care business, NOBODY has to be competent anymore, except the doctors, and they pay A LOT of malpractice insurance to keep lawyers out of their wallets.

It is a fucked-up system, and the more the government gets involved in it, the more fucked-up it will become. Show me ONE example where I am wrong.

I finished the paperwork and was told to go back to the waiting room. I found a seat this time. I sat there for another 45 minutes and almost missed it when they finally called my name. I was a zombie by then.

I went back to a tiny office, went through an interview with a genuine nurse, who was pissing away HER time and MINE by filling out a questionaire I could have emailed from my house, and I FINALLY got a blood sample and an EKG at 12:00. What a pathetic waste of time and energy that was. I could have done every bit of that shit at work in the Medical Clinic and had our company Nurse Practicioner fax it ALL to them, for FREE. As it went, my insurance company will probably be charged over $1,500 for that crap.

I am supposed to be at the hospital at 0515 in the morning. The operation is scheduled for 0715. I'll wager that I'll sit on my ass for AT LEAST an hour out there in that waiting room before they get ready to dose and cut me.

Passionate questions

I've noticed that a LOT of my readers consider Thomas Jefferson to be their hero. I was the only one to name Johnny Unitas.

LOTS of people can drive a stick shift. That's a good thing. SOME PEOPLE went really fast in a car doing evil, sexual things. Some people slept through the exerience. I've got some strange readers.

About 50% of respondents admit to shitting their pants. The other 50% lied about it.

Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are OVERWHELMING favorites for shitty Presidents. FDR appears frequently on BOTH SIDES of the equation. I am disappointed that more people didn't mention LBJ, who was the shittiest President of MY LIFETIME. Carter was a little man in a big job, Clinton was a whore-dog who used the office to get pussy, but LBJ intended to out-FDR FDR.

The goddam socialist, big-eared bastard gave us almost everything we have today that is destroying this once-great country. "Great Society," my ass. Socialist utopia was more like it. Now we don't have a politician on either side of the aisle who doesn't believe that providing manna from heaven is the GOVERNMENT'S JOB.

If we keep electing people who think that way, we are sunk, people.

Not enough people claimed Teddy Roosevelt as a great man.

My favorite answer for the most disgusting thing you ever ate is a tie between Sugarmama's nasty-tasting ex-boyfriend and the worm at the bottom of a bottle of Mezcal. I have eaten one of the two. Hint: IT WASN"T Sugarmama's ex-boyfriend, although thinking back on that experience, he might have tasted slightly better. That was worse than the shit I ate at the Greek wedding. I didn't remember it until someone else dragged that kicking, screaming, puke-drenched memory back to my recollection.

Ronald Reagan fares well in the poll, and I am delighted to see that fact. I believe that he just may go down in history as the greatest President of my lifetime. I always liked the Gipper. He knew what he believed and stuck to the basics. Not many politicians do that anymore.

Less than 20% of the wimmen who answered the poll enjoyed losing their virginity. 80% of the men did. Now, the wimmen fuck like wild dogs and have multiple orgasms. They are almost PREDATORY in their sexual appetites. The men are reading that crap and trying to hook up with the seasoned wimmen, while asking me if they can have my leftover Viagra.

Is life ridiculous, or what?

Yes, it is ridiculous. Guys, I've got first dibs on any woman who wants to try out my pump, and it's first come, first served on the Viagra. I don't need that stuff anymore. I'll throw the pills on the floor and y'all can fight over 'em.

Know what? I am very happy tonight. Men who have the pump (and their wimmen) tell me that it's even better than the real thing. The doc said that I'll probably lose some length from the original, but I'll gain some girth. Hell, I've got length to spare. I always said when Roscoe was working right that I'd be in porno movies if I just had some width to go with the rest.

But the main thing is, no more needles. No more walking down the street and seeing a woman I want to talk to and NOT DOING IT because I don't have my kit with me JUST IN CASE something good happens. No more trying to explain to a woman that I've got all hot and bothered that I can't function. No more saying that I can oral her, but I can't mount her. No more of this prison that I've lived in for almost two years.

Clever commenters

I love people like this guy. He thinks he's a wit, and he is half right. He even bragged about this clever litter-box dump on some unmentionable's forum.

Comments:

I'm in the medical field Acidman, do you have a current Phycologist?? If not I think I can help you with your problem.

You have either the big head or short dick syndrome, either way a head or lack of it is a common problem that can be cured by a course including some electric therapy or a deep medication therapy. I would suggest Lithium twice a day and a shot of morphine to keep you in a good mood.

Call me, I can help!
Al

Al, the last "Phycologist" I visited hauled out some chicken bones, ostrich feathers and a drum made from a departed village elder's skull. When he drank something from a goatskin cup, got all wild-eyed and started his Spirit Dance, I left and went to a bar. For all I know, he's still dancing.

Does your experience in the "medical field" include studying under that guy, or did it come from emptying bedpans, cleaning toilets and mopping floors in a free clinic? Just curious.

I've got a big head, all right. It's full of brains. Your head is full of something else. The contents of bedpans come to mind.

As far as the "short dick" goes, mine is BROKEN due to prostate cancer (which you probably find HILARIOUS), but I have been taught by people in the medical profession other than tribal witch doctors to load a hypodermic needle, plunge it into a certain specific part of my tender anatomy and enjoy one of the finest blue-steel throbbers you ever saw. Wait. You've never seen one of those, have you? You don't own the proper equipment.

I may have to jump-start it nowadays, but SHORT it AIN'T.

I'll take all the morphene you've got. I liked that stuff when they gave it to me in the hospital after my surgery. It gave me a slack jaw and delicious dreams. But I'll pass on the electro-shock and the Lithium. Wine is fine for me.

I DO, however, recommend coffee enemas for YOU. I would be delighted to give you one, right out of the steaming pot. You could probably handle about two quarts through a #5 funnel.

More acid stuff

I received a lot more comments and emails than I expected when I wrote my post about how I became known as "Acidman." The subject of acid seems to fascinate a bunch of people. It really shouldn't, because everybody reading this blog deals with acid every day.

I believe that acid is scary because of old black-and-white horror movies, where the hero or heronie in a mad scientist's lab always grabbed a bottle of Hydrochloric Acid and threw it in the monster's face at the end of the movie. The monster screamed, steamed and melted after that. I grew up believing that Hydrochloric acid was the most dangerous stuff in the world.

I'll bet that a BUNCH of people reading this post drank Phosphoric Acid today. If you drank a Coke or a Pepsi, you damned sure did. Read the ingredients on a Coke can. Good old Phosphoric Acid, P2O5, is a vital ingredient of ANY cola drink. (Okay-- quick chemistry lesson here: pH is a measure of alkalinity and acidity and the scale runs from 1 to 14. The lower the pH, the more acidic the substance is. The higher the pH, the more alkaline it is. Neutral (distilled water) has a pH of 7.0, right in the middle. Coke has a pH of about 3.5. When you wash your ham sandwich down with a coke at lunch, you're DRINKING ACID!!!

Sulfuric acid is one of the most commonly used chemicals in the world. It is used in EVERYTHING, from paper processing, to battery manufacturing, to digesting other chemicals to make them work in a process, to cleaning the beer vats at Anheiser-Bush to making nutrasweet and many pharaceuticals. The first written recipe for how to make sulfuric acid was etched on papyris about 5,000 years ago from the ancient region of Mesopotamia, right where we're fighting a war now. If done correctly, this formula would produce about a 15% solution of sulfuric acid, and it's primary use back then was in a formula for a LAXITIVE.

Hmmm... I don't know if it worked, but it HAD to burn either going down or coming out.

Sulfuric acid is a lot more dangerous than hydrochloric acid is, because sulfuric can be made at much higher concentrations. HCL runs out of room to grow stronger at about a 35% concentration. That killer of horror-movie monsters also is known as Muiratic Acid, and if you look at a bottle of Visine (or its competitor, Murine) you'll see that the prime ingredient that you drop in your eyes to "get the red out" is Muriatic Acid.

I've worked around several lime scrubbers, and we always used Acetic Acid to clean encrusted lime off the equipment. You probably have a bottle of acetic acid in your home right now, and if you like Italian Dressing on your salad, you EAT IT. It's called "vinegar."

We just introduced a new slurry product at work, and it gets a heavy dose of Citric Acid in the beginning of the process. Do you like lemonade? If you do, you drink citric acid.

Want to know why environmentalists piss me off so bad and send me off on rants all the time? It's because ordinary people who DON'T make a career working around all types of chemicals are easily frightened by the bullshit the scaremongers throw at them. I really believe that "toxic" is the most misused and misunderstood word in the English language any more.

EVERYTHING is "toxic" if you get too much of it. NOTHING IS TOXIC if you don't allow yourself to become poisoned. I'm not going to rewrite things I've written before here, but I'll tell you this. If you listen without question to the scaremongers, you're allowing yourself to be played for a dupe, a chump, and somebody's bitch. And the people doing it are making billions of dollars, buying politicians and changing the face of this country with their lies.

Joni Electric emailed to ask what was the most danergous acid I had ever worked around. On paper, that's easy. hydroflouric acid is by far the most dangerous chemical I've ever worked around if you just go by the POSSIBILITIES of what this chemical can do. But I handle it in concentrations no higher than 5%. It doesn't worry me, because it's not strong enough to unleash all its wrath.

The stuff looks like green water and has about as much effect on skin as the water in the borrow pits of Effingham County. Maybe less. Those borrow pits grow some nasty shit in them. That's why they turn green.

Full-blown, undiluted hydroflouric acid is one bad mofo. It packs the kind of wallop that doesn't wash off. But when it's dilute, you can wash Never-Seize stains off your hands with it. It ain't the poison, people. It's the dose.

Okay, that's acid lesson #2. Have a Coke, eat an Italian salad and squeeze lemon juice over the fish you cook to go with it.

February 21, 2008

Night time

I don't sleep well and I know that I use this blog as a way to pretend that I have a life. I KNOW that I don't, but I can still fool myself if I don't think long about it. I let work and blogging keep me busy. Three-day weekends are NOT good for me.

I don't give a shit about much. I've lost so much of what I once considered precious that I don't invest myself in ANYTHING
anymore. I look around the Crackerbox and I wonder what I'm doing here. How did this shit happen to me?

I don't even have a picture of my ex-wife. The only pictures of my son that I have, I got from my mama or took myself. This shit ain't right.

Goddam. I'll NEVER understand the pure meanness I was served.

Wimmen. I sure picked a fine one to fall in love with. And I still love her today, damn me.

Sunday morning

I stayed up VERY late last night. I was working hard. Yes... there's a pun in there. I still woke up at 6:00 this morning.

We have resecued seven POWs and they appear to be fine. This news is GOOD news.

I've had my riding lawn mower on the battery charger all night. I may try to crank it later today.

I can't decide whether to have a Mountain Dew or a Killian's Red for breakfast.

I don't think that I'll be going to church today. I never go to church anyway, so it's no big deal.

I work only four days next week, and two of them I'll spend in an off-site training seminar. Then I go on vacation. I'm going back to Merlefest to listen to bluegrass music and see if I can light upon a loose woman.

Speaking of loose women, I hear somebody moving around the Crackerbox and it ain't me. I had better go investigate...

Just ask

A large mammal (boy, I could have some fun punning off of THAT) asked this question:

What are your requirements for "wimmin"? I know some pretty damned cool ones between Savannah and Charleston. I know some who'd be glad to go fishing and partying with you on these long, three day weekends...and who knows? You might get a Pump Tester.

Here goes:

1. I like wimmen who enjoy the woods.

2. I like wimmen who are ladies in public and sluts in bed.

3. I like wimmen who smoke cigarettes and drink tequila.

4. I like wimmen who eat my cooking with a hearty appetite.

5. I like wimmen who can bait their own hook, catch a fish and handle that flopping critter with their bare hands.

6. I like wimmen who will sit still and let me play guitar and sing for them.

7. I like wimmen EVEN MORE when they can sing and let me do the harmony.

8. I like wimmen who are willing to scratch my back. I purr like a kitten when a woman does that.

9. I like wimmen who own an oyster knife, know how to use it and eats 'em raw.

10. I like wimmen who debate with me about salient and important issues of the day while drinking white zin at the kitchen table after a fine meal that I cooked. No dingbats need apply.

11. I like wimmen with pretty red toenails. I am, LITERALLY, a "sucker" for pretty red toenails. Hey! I have a foot fetish! What's the big deal?

12. I like wimmen who run a blog. I don't really want one of THOSE, because we would fight over the computer all the time. Wait... I take that back. I DO want one of those. We'll just have separate computers. Shit, I've got money.

13. I like wimmen who don't think I look weak when I cry while watching My Big, Fat Greek Wedding.

14. I like wimmen who don't mind getting their hands dirty in my garden. I like wimmen who break a sweat on a hot summer day. I believe the sexiest scent in the world is a musky, sweaty woman.

15. I like wimmen who iron my shirts. I am no fucking good at that.

16. I like wimmen who enjoy lying on a sleeping bag in the middle of nowhere and looking at the stars. I like the ones who will spoon with me when we fall asleep after making love right there.

17. I like wimmen that I can trust. I've not been lucky so far in that regard.

18. I like wimmen who play golf. I'll beat you every time, but that's just because I am better at the game. A good woman will appreciate that fact.

19. I like wimmen who eat their steaks rare, like white zin and let loose a good fart every now and then. I like EARTHY wimmen.

20. I like wimmen who appreciate the WISDOM a gray silver-haired, SEASONED man such as myself can share with them.

It helps if they look good nekkid, too, but that's a secondary concern. I would prefer a good partner over a sex-toy today. Hell, I look good nekkid.

February 20, 2008

Pain in the ass

I don't like the way AOL talks to me. If I ever meet the man who recorded that voice, I swear that I will strangle him. (OOPS! That might get me banned again!) I don't like the way it handles more than one window open at a time. I don't like the messy home page. But I'm beginning to figure it all out.

So far, I've managed to attract 42 people who answered my 25 questions. With my other service, setting up a composite of the best answers would be easy. Doing it now will be a little more difficult and time-consuming, but not impossible. I'll post the BEST OF THE BEST tomorrow night. You still have time to enter.

I rented My Big, Fat Greek Wedding on pay-per-view this evening. It made me cry. I shouldn't have watched that movie. It fucked with my head really badly.

It feels so GOOD to love somebody and so incredibly BAD when they stop loving you. It ain't worth it. The joy does not outlive the pain. I don't want to be in love ever again. NEVER AGAIN! I've had enough smoke and ash to last me the rest of my life.

It's a training thing

Our Training Department just got a wild boost of inspiratation from on high, with a little help from our sister plant in Australia (which I hope to visit some day, when I have a week's vacation to burn along with the business trip). They tested my operators for "Job Competence" and a mere 45% of my operators passed.

The operators are pissed. "THEY SAY I DON'T KNOW HOW TO RUN MY JOB!", they screamed. I disagreed, saying that obviously they could run the jobs, but the tests showed that they didn't have a clue what they were doing when they THOUGHT they were running the job. They didn't like my take on the matter.

But Friday, I had the perfect opportunity to TELL them and SHOW them what this training program is all about. They fought feeding "B" micronizer all night long Thursday. It wouldn't take feed. It kept blowing back. Dust was everywhere and my people worked their asses off that night. I heard every theory about what might be wrong from a slipped venturi to a complete overhaul of the micronizer.

I went to look. The micronizer exhaust blower was pulling 32 amps. It should run 65 with feed on the mills and 75 with feed off. I don't run that job every day of my working life, but I KNOW THAT. I got two guys together who DO RUN THAT JOB EVERY FUCKING DAY OF THEIR WORKING LIVES and asked them, "Look HERE!" Do you see anything wrong?"

They didn't. I wanted to collapse on the floor.

I have people operating jobs where they know what buttons to push and how to turn it off when something goes wrong, but they don't have a glimmer about how ANY of that shit actually works. I ended up giving a speech in the control room after I had mechanics tighten the drive belts on the exhaust blower and put a vacuum back on the mill. The mill ran fine after that.

I told everybody in the room that I wanted to hear NO MORE SHIT from them about the training department calling them "incompetent." If an entire shift spent 12 hours pissing in the wind and I find the problem in five minutes, I've obviously got a bunch of incompetent assholes working for me. Even when I POINTED to the problem, my fucksticks didn't recognize it.

I said that if I were an operator and I needed somebody like ME to bail me out of that kind of trouble because I didn't know what I was doing, I would admit that I was a dumbass. I would SEEK the help of the training department so that I never embarassed myself like that again. I would PLEAD for them to train me.

But my real problem is raw material. You've got to have a brain to start with before you can stuff it full of knowledge. I realize now that I don't have a lot of active brains working for me. No wonder the training department says that I'm in trouble. I am.

But the operators think the training department is picking on them, and they've copped an attitude. I can't have that situation in my ranks.

Moms are moms

I can identify with this post. It reminds me of MY mama. She can get fired up sometimes.

But she still loves little Robbie, her first-born son. I'm going to have my pump installed next Wednesday. Who do you think I called to ask about coming to pick me up from the hospital when my dick transplant is complete? MY MAMA, that's who.

And she agreed to do it.

I'm going to drive myself to the hospital, then have one of my friends take me back to pick up my truck when I feel able to drive. My mama will bring me home after the surgery. I just hope that she doesn't feel compelled to hang around and nurse me. Mamas feel that nursing urge strongly, but in this case I would rather be left alone with a handful of percodan and a box of white zin for a day or so.

The Second in Command, Nurse Ultimate, at my urologist's office says that I will be sore and bruised for "a few days" because of the procedure. I asked her, "How sore?" and she responded, "That depends on your pain threshold."

I told her that my pain threshold sucked and I wanted lots of wookie pills to make me feel better. "You'll get whatever you need," she replied. I started whining in pain right then. "Can I get some to practice with?" I asked. She threw me out of the office and told me to go wook myself.

It looks like everything is set. I get the lab work done on Tuesday and get reborn on Wednesday. My mama will drive me home afterward. They booked me in a 23-hour outpatient room, but as soon as I can walk, I'm leaving. And I lied about my pain threshold. Put me in a hospital room and I have an AMAZING ability to overcome pain if it means getting my Cracker ass out of there.

For a few days, I'll probably end up with something I've seen only in porno movies: A Big, Black Dick. But it's better than what I've been toting for the last 20 months. I threw away the elixer three months ago. I still have 15 hypodermic needles and an unlimited prescription for more. Plus, I have an unlimited prescription for Viagra.

I need to become a heroin addict who sells back-market Viagra. I can be a stoned pony selling little purple pills to people with limp dicks. Hell, after learning to give myself an injection in Roscoe, shooting myself in the arm would be a piece of cake. Guys, think about it. Does "hypodermic needle" and "my dick" go together? OF COURSE NOT!

But I have done that. I will never do it again. I can't wait for Wednesday, when my mama is going to drive me home.

I love it

Check this comment from a leftist asshole who attempts to put ME down. Notice the TOP THREE THINGS that you will always see in every idiotarian rant.

1) Bush is a moron. (Forget his degrees from TWO Ivy-League colleges and forget the fact that he seems to have beaten the shit out of every attack Democrats mounted against him. He remains a moron.)

2) Bush is a liar. (I cannot BELIEVE that Clinton dicksuckers have the unmitigated GALL to even TALK about lying after the way they fawned over their lying bastard, blow-job-in-the-Oval-Office nutless wonder who remains their hero. Clinton? All hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas. Bush pisses better stuff than Clinton ever thought about being.)

3) There is a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy! (I hope the hell so. I hope it is VERY VAST.)

Okay, excuse my rant, but this is MY BLOG and I can do whatever I want to do on it. Back to the comment now:

Bush is an honest man . . . .

Bush is honest? "I won't engage in nation-building," "I'll actually do something to help education/local economies/AIDS sufferers in Africa," "I won't pass along our [national debt] to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations," "I've given up boozing," "I can speak Spanish"--THAT Bush?

Right-wingers like to pretend that dislike for Bush is a partisan thing, but what besides their own partisanship could compel anyone to support him? It's not just that he's not a Democrat; it's that he's the worst his party has to offer. If you snuck a peashooter into the REPUBLICAN convention, blindfolded yourself, spun around a few times and blew, pretty much anyone you beaned would make a better president than Bush.

I want everyone to go back and read that piece of blithering idiocy again. Now, on the count of three.... BWHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

Admit it, you brainless, holier-than-thou, beanheaded asswipe. YOUR dislike of Bush is a VISCERAL THING. You hate him because he IS honest, he DOES what he says he going to do and he IS a leader. And he's WINNING! You fucking can't stand it, can you?

Again, it's not partisan--Dole, Guiliani, McCain (and I bet you can think of more names)--do you believe that if any one of these Republicans were in the White House, he'd, say, pack the judiciary and presidential advisory groups with religious nuts, or decide that protecting his cronies from the SEC was more important than stabilizing the financial market, or let his foreign and monetary policies be dictated by ivory tower ideologues, or select an attorney general who was afraid of cats and breasts and made a point of greasing up with Crisco on big occasions, or have a VP who goes permanently into hiding? It's only partisanship from their side than keeps Republicans from seeing how looney this administration is.

Okay, it's not "partisan." You're just out of your fucking mind. "Religious nuts...cronies...looney." Have you talked to your doctor about regulating your medication?

What but GOP partisanship could make them forget that before the mid-90s, Bush basically did nothing his whole life but get high and sponge off his dad and his dad's friends? The biggest rockpile most politicians have to deal with is fundraising and holding elected office is the only real job Bush ever had. But even there, he's never had to work as hard as others in his occupation--once again, Daddy's friends have spared him from the reality check of work. So we have a president who, in times of heartbreaking national crisis, whines about how he actually had to spend time on the phone! Poor baby!!--it almost cut into his jogging time!

Read a book, you simpering shit. All you are doing here is displaying your abject ignorance, which may play well with your leftist friends, but it doesn't fly in MY arena. Do you spit or swallow? You'll damn sure suck leftist doctrine like the mindless twit you are.

Clearly you're not a fan of President Clinton, but he got to Oxford and through Yale, passed the Bar, practiced law and started a political career through his own hard work. I obviously don't agree with you on much, but even you--who got through school on your own bat, held down a job you got on your own, supported a family, apparently lived some kind of grown-up life with real responsibilities and all the trimmings--YOU would make a better president than this pisher.

Posted by Molly, NYC at April 12, 2003 04:21 PM

No, I would have been a better President than Bill Clinton. My neighbor's CAT that shits on my truck would have made a better President than Clinton. Clinton never took advantage of his Oxford opportunity except to tour Europe, visit Russia and troll for blow-jobs. He has been a shallow piece of Arkansas white trash since the day he was born. The DIPSHIT HAS NEVER HAD A REAL JOB IN HIS LIFE!!!

George Bush, on the other hand, was a fighter pilot, a graduate of TWO Ivy League schools, a successful businessman and Governor of Texas before he became President. You call him dumb.

February 19, 2008

Acid thoughts

I got the nickname "Acidman" when was General Foreman over the 900-ton per day sulfuric acid plant where I worked from 1987 until 1992. That place never frightened me, although I learned to have a healthy respect for molten sulfur, SO2 and SO3 gas, and all forms of sulfuric acid.

I once walked up on a small rattlesnake at the acid plant one day, and the little shit coiled up and struck at me. He was acting like a real badass, so I walked inside the control room, grabbed a 500-ml bottle of 98% acid, went back outside and doused him with it. Nothing happened. The acid didn't bother the snake at all. Its skin was dry enough that the acid had no moisture to react with.

So, I picked up a water hose and doused the snake with some good old H2O. A cloud of steam erupted and the snake straightened out like a walking stick, cooked to a crisp. We were hell on animals back there.

We also had the largest army of bald-headed, blind rats in the southeast around the old scale house, where we weighed the acid trucks that we loaded. That building was constructed in 1954, and it had seen better days. There was a baseball-sized hole in one corner of the floor, and marsh rats would enter and exit as they pleased through it to raid operators' lunch boxes. I once went in the scale house and discovered a rat bigger than most house cats and with nuts the size of golf balls sitting on the desk and grinning at me as if he worked there.

One of the guys got pissed one day and hung a chicken bone from a string over the hole and armed himself with several bottles of acid. The rats would come out of the hole, grab the chicken bone and wrestle with it until he poured 98% sulfuric acid on their heads. They became bald-headed and blind after that, and when they emerged from underneath the scale house to run in blind circles out in the open, we killed them with pipe-clubs.

Yeah, PETA. I clubbed several myself.

Here's some acid trivia for you:

* It takes acid to make acid. If you burn molten sulfur, it reacts with the combustion air to form SO2 gas. Run that through a catalyst bed and the SO2 reacts with the remaining oxygen to form SO3 gas. Run that gas stream through a cascade of 98% acid and the SO3 grabs the 2% moisture in the acid stream and forms H2SO4, which is sulfuric acid. If you scrub well, nitrogen is the waste gas leaving the stack. (our atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 20.9% oxygen and 1.1% trace gases, of which that global-warming monster CO2 is .03%.)

* We sell acid to paper mills, battery manufacturers and all the other likely suspects. But we also sell to Nutrasweet and Anheiser-Busch.

* You can make sulfuric acid that is MORE THAN 100% concentration. It's called "oleum," it fumes on contact with air, and it can be MORE than 100% acid. Go figure.

* 98% sulfuric acid freezes at +46 degrees F. Lower the concentration to 93% and the freezing temperature drops to -30 degrees F. Lower the concentration further, to 77% and the acid freezes at +10 degrees F. I've read that this phenomenon is caused by hydroxyl ions, but I call it "Pure Fucking Magic."

* If you have dry hands, you can pour 98% acid into your palm and not get burned. DO NOT pour it on the back of your hand, ever. That's a totally different skin surface. Refer again to my snake story.

* Let a black person get hit with 98% acid and he turns pink everywhere he is hit. We ARE all alike under the skin. I've seen proof.

* The worst injury I ever saw in 23 years of work in a chemical plant (other than the time a contractor fell through the roof and landed on concete 100' below-- yeah, that fall killed him. But he was a contractor. He doesn't count.) was sulfuric acid burns to two mechanics who violated every line-breaking rule we have and got covered up with 98% acid. One of those guys still works at the plant and still has horrible scars from that accident. He can't stand direct sunshine anymore, either. See him with his shirt off and you'll cringe.

* That accident DID NOT happen at the acid plant under my watch. It happened inside the plant where I pumped the acid to end-users. I never got anybody burned (other than the gnat bites you feel that tell you there's a leak somewhere) the entire time I ran the place.

* I loved that job. I had a chance to return two years ago, but I turned it down. I'm a white-end guy now, and too accustomed to farting dust to go back to making acid. You don't make pigment at the acid plant. I make pigment where I am now. If I don't eat and breathe about 2.2 pounds of TiO2 dust every day at work anymore, I might go into withdrawal. To me, it's like SPICE on Dune. I gotta have it.

If you have any questions about sulfuric acid, feel free to ask. Acidman probably knows the answer.

Ass over teakettle

I just fell down in my garage. It wasn't a pretty fall, either. I was dragging my riding lawn mower inside and not looking behind me, and I tripped on a box of some shit I haven't unpacked since I moved into the Crackerbox. I fell square on my ass and sprawled on the concrete.

It didn't hurt, but it made me feel ridiculous. I once was a nimble man. No goddam box full of unopened shit could have taken ME in my prime. But it can today.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I did neither. I got up, finished pulling the lawn mower into the garage and poured myself a glass of wine. Old man, fall down. On the sofa this time.

Music

I played guitar today and I taught a 13 year-old boy his first hot licks. He wants a cheap guitar to practice on and he asked me about which one of mine would I sell him for $40.

I laughed and bogged a foot in his ass as I sent him out the door. I don't play $40 guitars anymore. My collection is worth a LOT of money.

Beginners should start with $40 guitars. This boy has potential. I'll check with my friend Willie tomorrow to see what he can rustle up. I may buy it for the boy before he goes back home to Mississippi. A $40 guitar today is better than what I learned on.

I learned to play on an $18 Silvertone ordered from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. That guitar was a piece of shit, but I learned to play it. After that experience, a NICE guitar was like iced tea in summer. It was cool, comforting and easy to handle. How good would I be today if I had started with a $40 guitar?

I've been listening to music all day and playing along with a lot of it. An Old Friend sent me a CD and I've tripped back in time because of it. If you've never heard of Kim Richey (which I never had before I opened my mail yesterday), you need to. That Bittersweet CD is a heartbreaker. It's my kind of music. It is beautiful and visceral at the same time.

I'm going to bitch-slap my friend the next time I see him. That CD hurts to listen to, but I can't stop. Bejus. Good music does that to me.

Dumbass are me

I actually paid for two firewall programs that I keep disabled when I blog. If they are live, they put up a firewall between me and anything I want to do. None of my passwords work. None of my user names are recognized. It's like having a Nazi in my computer.

I turn it off when I'm blogging, then turn it back on when I'm finished. Of course, I usually turn the computer off, too, so that pair of $50 firewalls are doing me a whole bunch of good. I have no clue what I'm doing on the net. I just write.

I see LOTS of people "playing" with their sites, developing "skins" and redoing the page once every week. I have one thing to say to every one of them: FUCK YOU!

All I want is a platform from which to launch whatever flies out of my noggin. I have that here. I don't give a lovely shit about making the place look any different than it does right now. I'm not a decorator. Look at the Crackerbox if you don't believe me. My idea of neatness falls somewhere between Dante's seventh level of hell and the local landfill.

So, I just want to announce to all you people who constantly fuck with your "web design" that I don't have a cyber-clue what you're talking about and if you insist on writing about it, I will quit reading you. So, there.

February 18, 2008

Fried catfish

I'm making a big mess of fried catfish for supper tonight. I like catfish.

We call them "turd-wrestlers" in this part of Georgia, but that doesn't stop us from eating them. A catfish will eat things that a crab would choke on, but catfish do produce some pretty, tender, white meat.

Ever been fishing for them using old tires? I have. Here's a trick that I learned from some guys who KNEW how to catch catfish. You take an old tire and wire it shut on the inside, except for one small opening on the end. You tie a rope to it and throw it in the water. It fills up with water and sinks. Do about twelve of them (old tires aren't difficult to find in Southeast Georgia.) Leave them in the water overnight. You don't have to use any bait. Just go pull the tires up in the morning.

Catfish like to swim into those old tires to spend the night. They can get in, but they can't get out. They don't have enough room to turn around. Just pull the tires up and grab the fish at first light. You had better wear a glove when you go dragging those catfish out of the tires, because they'll cut you with their fins if they get the chance. They get all pissed off about falling for such a dumbass trick.

How to keep deer out of the garden

In response to this blogger I'm going to repeat something that I believe I wrote about before, but I'm too lazy to check the archives and find the post. The first time the deer raided my garden, I was pissed. They broke all my melons, ate the guts out of them, chewed up my cucumbers and devastated my tomatoes. They stomped all over everything else.

I was ready to buy an electric fence until I talked to an old farmer down the road. He told me to build a couple of scarecrows, stick them in my garden and piss on them every day. Deer do not like the smell of human urine. If they get a whiff of it, they'll stay away.

I built two scarecrows. I stuffed a couple of old tee-shirts with hay and used a couple of pairs of blue jeans to make them. I hung them both on T-bars that I made from scrap lumber, and they looked pretty good to me. Quinton helped me do the work, and when we had the scarecrows posted, I told him, "There's one more thing we have to do to get it right."

"What's that Daddy?"

"We have to go pee on both of them to keep the deer away."

You know what I really like about boys? You tell them to go pee on something and they LIKE doing that. We peed all over both scarecrows, just me and my son, with wangers in the wind. That was a good day.

I had to move the scarecrows about once every week, but they damn sure worked to keep the deer away. Quinton told all of his friends about peeing on the scarecrows, and I can remember many a time that I saw six boys break up a game in the back yard, run to my garden and pee on my scarecrows.

February 17, 2008

Rough justice?

How about NO JUSTICE WHATSOEVER? I believe that I have mentioned before that people in Canada have frozen brains. Read this and tell me I'm wrong.[Ed. Article no longer exists and I can't find a cached version.]

Saini and friend Ranjit Singh Bassi were sleeping at the convenience store on Sunday night when a pair of thieves pulled up in a van stolen from Montreal.

One broke in through the front door using a crowbar and wheeled in two large garbage containers to haul cigarettes to the truck.

Saini and Bassi, who were in the storage room, surprised the thieves. One, armed with a knife, was scared away by Bassi.

Saini said the other thief took a swipe at him with the crowbar. Saini, armed with an aluminum baseball bat, swung back.

The 45-year-old suspect suffered head, neck and leg injuries, but was well enough to be arraigned Monday on multiple charges including breaking and entering, parole violation, receiving stolen goods and possession of burglary tools.

What did the police do when they finally arrived at the scene of the crime? They arrested the STORE OWNER, of course, and charged him with "assault with a weapon and aggravated assault."

My aching balls. If MY store were robbed three times in a month and I was forced to SLEEP in it to defend my property, you can bet your sweet ass that I would be "aggravated" the next time someone broke in. And you can also bet your sweet ass that I would "assault" the thieves.

But I live in the Southern United States, not Canada. I would have a firearm, not a baseball bat, and the thief might have "head, neck and leg" injuries afterward, but his injuries would be far too fatal for him to appear in court. And I don't believe that his partner would have gotten away, either.

And I would NOT have been charged with anything except good citizenship.

That's what I like about the South. And that's one of the MANY things I don't like about Canada.

Food for thought

I was raised well by loving parents who instilled a lot of their values in me. Much of that raising and many of those values stuck with me all of my life. But I also walked a crooked path at the same time. I didn't always do what they wanted me to do. I didn't always heed good advice.

I broke my parents' hearts more than once and made them angry enough to want to kill me many times. But I believe that I ended up knowing who I am.

Yeah, yeah,I agree that all arguments must appeal to reason and employ logic or they're not really arguments, just rants. But quite often, the purely rational argument is not the best argument among non-Vulcans. As Chesterton noted the purely rational man will not marry and the purely rational soldier will not fight. If you think the visceral and emotional have no place in political arguments you must live alone on an island. There may good arguments and logical justifications for saying "ick" (or yuck, blech etc) but that doesn't mean we should simply dismiss plain old revulsion out of hand. As a matter of pure objective analysis, the political agent who ignores the role of passion and revulsion will invariably lose against the one who takes such things into account.

I didn't name this blog "Gut Rumbles" for nothing. I'm a visceral guy when it comes to my values. It either "feels" right, or it doesn't. If I think "ick" about something, I won't do it, and nobody can make me. The thought of owning a cat today makes me say "ick," kind of like the thought of eating human flesh does.

I'll draw an "ick" line in the dirt and I won't cross it.

I believe that abortion is icky. Partial-birth abortion is infanticide. I don't care what the pro-choice harridans have to say about it. It's icky to me. ALL abortion is icky to me.

Affirmative Action is icky. How can we have " equal rights" in this country when government stacks the deck in favor of "minorities?" That's just fucking WRONG. I see totally incompetent people getting good jobs every day because of the color of their skin. I am icked-out by that crap.

Blacks have had 150 years and every goddam bootstrap in this country HANDED to them since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society bullshit and they STILL have a 70% illegitmacy rate on newborns and occupy 50% of the prison cells in the country. That's not racism, folks. That ain't "diversity, either. That's a part of society that needs to clean up its act and learn to be responsible. To reward or excuse that kind of behavior just encourages more of the same.

Who are their heroes? Jesse Jackson. Al Sharpton. Maxine Waters. Al Gore. Bill Clinton. What do these "heroes" offer? More of the same thing that has kept Black people on the Democrat plantation since the 60's. Taking a handout may be easy, but it IS NOT freedom. Freedom is a dangerous thing. It offers the possibility of failure.

But it gives you the chance to succeed. I'll take my chances in a fair game. I know that I can do it because my gut tells me so.

No one will ever change my mind about abortion or Affirmative Action. Both are fucking WRONG, period. I won't campaign to outlaw abortion, because I know human nature. Outlawing abortion won't ever stop abortions. People will have them anyway. Rich people will have clean ones and poor people will get what they can afford. That situation is WORSE than what we have now.

But Affirmative Action is inexcusable. ANY TIME the government favors one group over another, government is out of line. The JUSTIFICATION is ridiculious, too. We discriminated against YOU once upon a time, and we realize now that discrimination is wrong. So, to atone for that sin we are going to discriminate against a DIFFERENT group of people now. Two wrongs make a right.

Fuck that.

Stop making excuses for failure. Stop trying to give people something they don't deserve. Level the playing field, make the rules clear, and say, "Grab it and growl." Then, back off and stay the fuck out of the fray. THAT'S what government should do.

Equality of opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcomes. If you don't have the wherewithall, you can't compete. Giving you a leg up when you don't have the wherewithall does you no favor. It dooms you to become a joke around the people you work with. "No, don't give that assignment to HIM. It's a complex problem, as in COMPLEXION, if you know what I mean. He can't do it. Give it to the intern. That kid is bright."

That shit happens all the time, and when a real Black whiz-bang comes along, nobody believes that he did it through sheer ability and hard work. We've been taught NOT TO EXPECT ABILITY AND HARD WORK FROM BLACK PEOPLE! THEY NEED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION! THEY CAN'T COMPETE! He's gotta be just another Black jelly bean because we have SO MANY of them in positions that they can't handle today.

If that crap is doing Black people a favor, there ain't a cow in Texas. It rewards the weak and punishes the strong.

A flash of brilliance

I received this missive in my email today. I take it VERY seriously, because it was written by a very dangerous person. He may be a fucktard, but he doesn't believe that he is, and that kind of person is dangerous.

"New Zealand has made recommendations for residents there to modify behaviors that have an impact on climate change.

Did they check with you first?"

No, they didn't, and that's a damn good thing. I have followed the politics of New Zealand for a while now, and I believe that the country is competing seriously with California to become the certified nut-bowl of the world. The Maiori should have kept it for themselves. At least they didn't mind cutting down a few trees.

"The propose that without (or even with at this late stage) the following are possible:
*Earth's temperature is predicted to rise by between 1.4degC and 5.8degC over the next 100 years -- faster than at any time over the past 10,000 years."

I call that a wild-assed guess that has NO ABSOLUTE SCIENCE to back it up. I also call it a very imprecise "prediction." I'll play dice with anyone who allows me to bet on that kind of scale.

"Rainfall patterns are likely to become more sporadic."

Aren't rainfall patterns ALWAYS sporadic? WTF?

"Sea levels will rise between 9cm and 88cm by 2100, and may threaten low-lying countries such as some Pacific Islands. Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries after greenhouse gas concentrations have stabilised.
The impact of global warming may be particularly harmful for countries like New Zealand that are 'climate dependent'."

Well, if rising sea levels drown your dumb ass, the world will be a better place.

"Possible environmental impacts include drier conditions in the east, wetter conditions and flooding in the west, pressure on some native ecosystems,
biosecurity risks, possible water shortages, rising sea levels in some places and more sub tropical pest and disease problems."

Okay. I see the potential disaster here. We have dryer plus wetter, flooding plus drought, water shortages while we flood, and a danger to "native ecosystems." Got-dam! PREACH ON, BROTHER, you fucking Druid.

"Economic impacts may include some crops disappearing, other threats include the introduction of new pests and diseases -- mosquitoes, dengue fever
-- and dealing with the effects of climate extremes (drought, flooding and erosion)."

That sentence would gain an automatic "F" grade in freshman English class where I attended college. Grammar means following a few simple rules, asswipe. That's all I'm going to say about the brilliance displayed therein.

"Changes in temperature may threaten native plants and animals."

If they can't adapt to a changing world, they should perish. That's how Mother Nature does business.

Now, here come my favorite part:

"I know from covering the environmental news beat that in some parts of the world some of these things have already been observed."

I already know that you can't write, which is why you were assigned the environmental beat, but I'll cut you some slack just for being so Got-dam sanctimonious. NAME ONE! That's all I ask. And don't give me that Tuvelo shit that you environmental butt-wipes hold up all the time. The Pacific Ocean isn't rising; Tuvelo is SINKING because the citizens there are digging their island right out from under themselves.

Get your facts straight before you bitch at me.

"If you were to want to do the right thing, you could advise your readers that absolute, blockheaded rejection of any notion of climate change is not only
foolish but, as you so quaintly put it, 'FUCKTARDED."

BWA-HA-HA-HA!"

Well, stupid is as stupid does. Take a good look in the mirror and tell me what YOU see, fucktard.

"But, please don't link to me. Your readers are rude, stupid and boring. One jerk has been filling my comments with childish nonsense. Where do you find these people?"

How do you find your ass with both hands, you blithering idiot? There isn't a goddam thing you wrote in that email that you can prove or even re-enforce with science. It's all a bunch of myth and bullshit swallowed by gullible fucktards such as yourself. I'll wager that you actually DO cover "the environmental news beat." You're the kind of witless drone who writes (poorly) on those stories.

February 16, 2008

Wild game

I don't hunt, except for going bird-shooting every now and then. I like to watch the dogs work on a bird-hunt, and I like the way quail and dove haul ass out of the weeds like a fighter pilot trying to shake a MIG off his six. They make a difficult target to hit, even with a good shotgun. To me, that's good sport.

I never gave a damn about deer hunting. I went once and didn't like it, so I never did it again. Something about sitting in a stand and freezing my ass off in the semi-darkness while waiting for a deer to walk by never appealed to me. I could have shot all the deer I wanted on the mini-farm, just by laying in wait for them at night, but I wanted only to keep them out of my garden. I learned how to do that, so I left the deer alone.

But I've eaten a lot of "wild" game in my life. I've eaten rabbit and squirrel, venison and buffalo, alligator and turtle, quail and dove, armadillo and racoon, shark and frog-legs, and I even took a bite of a barbecued rattlesnake when I was drunk-up at some Rattlesnake Roundup I attended one summer. It tasted like shit.

I like venison and I like alligator. I know people who can cook that stuff so well that you can't tell the venison from roast beef and you can't tell alligator from ANYTHING. Alligator tail, fried just right, tastes like chicken with just a slighty fishy aftertaste. It is excellent with fried okra.

Any sane, logical person...

Okay, explain this one to me. [Ed. Cached version. Beware of a couple of possible pop-ups.] When you have cross words with a couple in a Wal-Mart checkout line, then attack them in the parking lot, it's THEIR FAULT. You just thugged-up, went savage and did what any sane, logical person would do in the same situation.

Shortly after Lennell Greer was charged Friday with beating two people at a Wal-Mart store in Forest Park on Christmas Eve, Greer's wife lashed out at the victims, saying her husband simply was protecting their daughter.

"A father's love is his crime,'' said the wife, who identified herself as "Mrs. Lennell Greer.'' "What would any man do when a grown man starts something with his 11-year-old, 70-pound daughter?''

I'll tell you what a man does when that happens. He leaves the store, gets in his car and drives away with his daughter, while explaining the fact that a lot of assholes exist in this world. He DOES NOT attack those people in the parking lot with a baseball bat. When he does that kind a maniac shit, HE is the asshole. Mrs. Lennel Greer needs to be dragged off and shot, along with her thug of a husband.

Mrs. Greer noted her husband was picked up by police on Christmas, and her daughter wasn't able to give him his gift.

"From her first Christmas she has never been separated from her father. Never,'' she said. "Now he's incarcerated. Is that what Santa has to bring?''

Have you ever heard a more senseless, self-pitying whine in your life? Santa didn't bring that baseball bat and Santa isn't the one who assaulted two people with it, either. Mrs. Greer, your FUCKED-UP HUSBAND did that, and he deserves to have his ass in jail, the stupid, violent cretin.

Just be glad that the dumbfuck didn't pull that stunt in the parking lot of the Super Wal-Mart in Rincon, Georgia. He wouldn't be in jail. He would be in the fucking morgue, with numerous perferations in his body from gunshot wounds. That aluminum baseball bat ain't no match for a .38 pistol. He would have died in the parking lot, in a puddle of blood, and that bat would have gone rolling across the asphalt, making a nice, tinny sound when it fell from his dead hands. The bastard would have deserved it, too.

No jury in Georgia would convict anybody who shot such a thug under those circumstances.

I'm going to take a wild guess about the racial implications of this crime. I don't know many white men named "Lennell." I don't know many black people with the surname of "Baures." I personally believe that this has all the earmarks of a "hate crime," that was racially motivated.

Something else I left behind

I read the book then saw the movie Deliverance. (I also met James Dickey, too, but that's another story. He played old Elvis Prestly tunes on a nice Martin guitar when I talked with him. I play better than he did.)

Anyway, after all that Southern input, I took up archery. I shot for about two years with a simple 48# Bear bow. I got pretty good at it. From 50 yards or closer, I was VERY accurate. But I learned quickly to notch the arrow, draw the bow, and aim and fire. I don't care who you are. Keep a 48# simple bow drawn for 20 seconds and your arms start to shake. That arrow may end up in the trees.

I met a gray-headed old man on the archery range one day who was drilling the bulls-eye every time, but his bow had all kinds of pulleys and strange bullshit on it. I walked over to talk to him.

I learned that he had a 100# bow, but it was double-action. That meant that you had 100# of pull for six inches on the draw, then the pulleys kicked in and you had about 25# to fight after that. He also had a telecopic sight mounted on the bow. He let me shoot it.

DAMN! I had to readjust everything I ever learned with a bow. After about twelve arrows, I got good and I had to give it back to him. Otherwise, I would have killed him, stolen that wonderful bow and set mine on fire.

I don't know why I was so surprised. I know the difference between a good guitar and a bad one and sometimes you get what you pay for. My bow cost $50. His SIGHT cost more than that.

I haven't notched an arrow in 20 years and I don't know what happened to my bow. But I once liked walking that archery range and shooting the entire course.

February 15, 2008

My boy

If you're not a parent, you may not understand what I'm about to say. But if you ARE a parent, I'll bet that you see my point clearly. I have a difficult time remembering when he wasn't part of my life. Ten years is only 1/5th of my lifetime, but I don't remember what life was like before he came along. He has been such a joy and such a pain in the ass to me that I can't recall what life was like without him.

Ten years.

That's the blink of an eye in cosmic terms, but I've watched that boy grow from shitting in his diapers to calling me an "ugly, old geezer" as he runs down the hallway laughing. I've watched him learn to crawl, then to walk, then to run, then to ride a bicycle.

I've watched him play soccer, baseball, football and basketball. I've watched him wrestle in the state finals. I've watched him eat everything I have in the got-dam refrigerator, and I've watched him sleep at night. Bejus. He hits double-figures tomorrow.

Where does the time go? I figure that I have about two more years before he becomes a rebellious teenager and decides that I am full of shit and as dumb as they come. All teenaged boys go through that stage, and I expect it from my son. I did it to my father. I hope that I live long enough to make my boy believe that I got smart again, all of a sudden.

Quinton is not far away from that moment of defiance that every young man must display for his father. I expect it, and in some ways I look forward to it. That will be the day that Quinton decides to be his own man.

I wish that we had some kind of primitive rite of passage, where the village elders took a boy into a tent, poured oil on his head, waved wood-smoke in his face, chanted some mumbo-jumbo and then gave him an experienced woman to sleep with that night. He could emerge from the tent the next morning as a MAN, and everybody in the village would accept that fact.

We don't do such things in western civilization. I am not convinced that we have the right idea.

Fucking up

I've fucked up a lot in my life. I believe that everybody does. If I have a single reader who NEVER fucked up in this life, I want to hear from you and learn your secrets, because I damn sure could glom on some that wisdom.

I believe that everyone who takes chances, accepts risk and goes for adventure is bound to fuck up numerous times. That's the price you pay for living a good life. I'm not talking about a STUPID fuck-up, such as the crack-head who robs a 7-11 store, shoots the clerk, runs off with $40 and a carton of Newports, then gets arrested two blocks down the road.

He spends the rest of his life in prison for $40 and a carton of Newports. That's a STUPID fuck-up.

I'm talking about fuck-ups that you never saw coming and never even expected. Marry the wrong person. You fucked up, but it may take years to discover that fact. Work a job for 24 years and get fired because you write a blog. You fucked up again.

I'll probably fuck up some more before I die. I wouldn't have it any other way. I just try not to fuck-up the same way twice. I'm going to smoke a big, fat cigar and drink some wine before I go to bed tonight. I'm going to try my best not to fuck-up when I do that.

Fuh-e-duh

Somebody asked, so I'll explain. Long ago, at a drive-in movie far away, I was as stoned as a sphynx. I don't remember the movie I was watching, but some little Oriential boy ran up to the hero and started yelling what sounded like "Fuh-e-duh! Fuh-e-duh!" while trying to drag the hero to whatever the boy wanted to show him.

I was in my 1968 Javelin with my friend, Junior Walker. The reefer-smoke was thick as London fog inside that car at the time. Junior said, "I know how he feels. I'm pretty well fuh-e-duh myself right now."

That gave me a case of the idiot giggles and I damn near pissed my pants. For a few years after that, "fuh-e-duh" meant that you had ENOUGH of whatever you were doing at the time.

It sounds like how you'd say "fucked up" when you're really fucked up.

February 14, 2008

A fond memory

Rick, Steve and I went up to Joyce Kilmer State Park in North Carolina for our third trip up to the top of Hangover Mountain. I fell in Slickrock Creek on the third crossing and told them to go own while I put on some fresh socks and dry britches. (It's not called "Slickrock Creek" for nothing) We had been drinking and doping all night long on the way up there.

I changed clothes, ate a can of vienna sausages and smoked a cigarette. Then I went to catch up with them.

I made it to the base of the mountain, where it's nothing but STRAIGHT UP from there, and I never saw my friends. I walked out onto a rock ledge and shouted at them but heard no reply. I KNEW that the fuckers didn't go any farther than where I was, because it was the last decent campsite before the grueling climb to the top of the mountain. Ain't no way they went past there with the sun going down.

So, I camped there by myself that night and had a goddam wild hog come tearing down off the mountain to terrorize me. That sumbitch had a severe case of attitude and sounded like an army of trolls when he came rushing down the streambed in the dark. I bounced several large rocks off of him, but he paid no attention. Shit, I think the bastard LIKED being hit by rocks.

He started snorting and grunting and rooting around the campfire and I am sitting there in my hammock with a Bowie Knife in one hand and a canteen full of bourbon in the other. I looked at the knife, I looked at the hog and I took a drink from the canteen. What else are you going to do?

Bohunkus Boar finally got tired of fucking with me and wandered away. He sounded like a goddam elephant stomping through the woods. I laid down in my hammock and went to sleep.

The next morning, I figured that I would give Rick and Steve until 11:00 to become unlost. Otherwise, I was going on to the top of the mountain without them. I would make my own way back home from there. At 10:45, I saw two heads bobbing up the trail. It was them.

"WHERE IN THE HELL HAVE YOU ASSHOLES BEEN?" I asked, politely.

"Fuh-e-duh! Fuh-e-duh!" said Rick.

"We got all fucked-up, Rob," said Steve. "Where the trail turns down by the river we kept going straight and found a dead end. Rick just said "Fuh-e-duh" and went to sleep. I said "fuh-e-duh" and went to sleep, too. We figured that you would be okay and you would wait for us."

Well, they were right. They left me asshole deep in a creek, ran off and got lost, delared "fuh-e-duh" and went to sleep, depending on ME, who fell in the creek when they didn't, to take care of myself. See what good friends I have?

Steve died in February of this year. The last time I saw him, we laughted about that backpacking trip. We were young, dumb and full of cum back then.

The Philpot-Benge feud

Everybody knows about the Hatfields and the McCoys having a good, old-fashioned mountain feud. Big deal. Theirs wasn't shit.

The Philpot-Benge feud lasted longer and killed a lot more people than the Hatfields and McCoys even thought about. It started at a house of ill repute, where some men were drinking moonshine and playing poker after sporting with some loose wimmen. Someone accused Newton Benge of cheating and pulled out a pistol. He shot Newt right between the eyes. Newt pulled out a pistol of his own and killed the man dead.

As my 91 year-old grandmother tells the story, Newt was walking around the sporting house wiping brains off the back of his head and saying, "We've got to get 'em, boys." As Mommie says, "He lived, with a bullet right through his head, until the moonshine wore off."

A lot of shooting and killing ensued thereafter. My mama still can remember men on horseback riding by the house and firing rifles through the walls when she was a little girl. Everybody ducked behind the cast-iron stove and hugged the floor when that happened. The first paying job my grandfather had as a woodworker was to build a coffin for somebody killed in the feud. That man was shot outside a school-house, and nobody could get to the body for days because of the snipers. He died in the summer, and the heat took a toll. His body swelled a bit.

"I had to knock the side off the coffin and add some more wood before we could fit him in there," my grandfather once told me.

One of the Philpots got arrested and sent to "the pen" for some crime, and a Benge got arrested ON PURPOSE, just so he could go to prison and kill the man. More than 100 people were killed in that feud before it finally ended.

It's a fascinating story. I've met Clyde Benge, who is Newts's son, and my mother's cousin. I've heard recollections about that fight all of my life. And as it all wrung out in the end, I am kin to both the Philpots and the Benges.

I am going to play again

I posted a Catfish email about golf and I got a lot of comments, most from people who never played golf. I haven't played since July 5th, 2001. I remember that last round as if it were yesterday. I always remember when I play for money.

I won money that day, with a 205-yard five wood shot over 200 yards of water on the 18th hole that ended up ten feet from the flag. I drilled that fucking shot and then I sank the putt for all the money.

Then, I put my clubs away one week later and I have not picked them up since. My life fell apart.

To me, golf has been the most daunting game I've ever played. It's you against the course. You can't blame anything on anybody but yourself if you fuck up. But if you come into #18 with $80 riding on your next shot and your competitor has carried the water and put his shot on the green 40 feet from the hole, you CAN'T lay up. You also realize that if you fuck this shot up, it's all over but the crying. That's when golf really becomes golf.

You KNOW that you can hit that shot, because you've done it before, and you just have to believe. So, you do it.

When it comes off the club, you know. Before you look up to see the ball you're already saying, "Be the right stick, baby!" It felt crisp when you hit it and it was just right. You watch that sucker headed for the green and say "Get UP, you sonofabitch! Be the right stick!"

When the ball clears the water by five feet, bounces on the rim of the green and rolls up right in front of the pin, you feel almost as if you just had an orgasm. I DID IT!!!

People who don't play golf don't understand that feeling. People who don't play poker don't understand that feeling. It ain't like watching grass grow. It's hanging your ass out there with nobody but yourself to depend on. When you do it right, it is BETTER THAN SEX! Especially when you sink the putt and get called a Lucky Sumbitch by the guy who has to slap leather and pay you $80 because you did what you had to exactly WHEN you needed to.

Golf is a sublime game. It will check your character. Especially when you gamble on it.

Use your head

Go check the comments on this post below. I like this woman, but I respectfully submit that she is full of shit in everything she has to say.

My father died of prostate cancer, and I was diagnosed with the disease myself at the age of 49. We both worked at the same chemical plant. Put two and two together. Obviously, the chemicals we handled gave us cancer.

Okay, that's a common denominator. Does it prove causation? If so, why doesn't everybody at the fucking plant develop prostate cancer? It should be rampant among the ranks, but it's not. My friend Steve Hamby died of prostate cancer and he never set foot in that plant.

I believe that I had a hereditary disposition to develop that disease. My father set a record on the Smith side of the family by living for 62 years. Every other male as far back as anyone can remember died young, usually from violence or some sickness that a good shot of antibiotics could cure today. Who knows how many of my relatives would have developed prostate cancer? They didn't live long enough to serve for a good study.

I am well aware that certain substances cause cancer when you are exposed to them in heavy doses over a long period of time. Asbestosis is a good example. So is lung cancer from smoking cigarettes. My grandfather worked 40 years in the coal mines and developed Black Lung. That happens when you inhale coal dust for 40 years (my grandfather also lived to be 89 years old, and died of congestive heart failure, not Black Lung).

We are becoming a nation of frightened, uneducated, whining pussies today because we don't understand cause and effect anymore. Our bodies are MADE OF CHEMICALS and we require chemicals to survive. What the hell do you think a VITAMIN IS, anyway? What do you think happens in your belly when you eat food? Digestion is a CHEMICAL REACTION.

Got-dam! I've read enough about "cancer clusters" to know that no one has EVER proved a direct cause and effect, and shitheads such as Erin Brockovitch damn sure don't help the situation. We are a gullible, easily-fooled people. We have charlatins, junk-scientists and totally ignorant reporters spoon-feeding us unmitigated bullshit every day, and a lot of people SWALLOW IT.

I don't.

You know what's going to kill you? Life will. You can eat all the organic food your little heart desires, and pass anti-smoking ordinances until the cows come home, ban every pesticide known to mankind and worship at the grave of Rachel Carson like some mad Druid priest. You know what's going to happen in the end? You die anyway.

Be an environmentalist if it makes you happy. You ain't going to save the planet. You ain't going to be anything but a gigantic pain in the butt to others who want to live free. But, go ahead. You have the right to be a complete asshole in this country. Of course, you need to understand that if you have your way, those rights will disappear for people who disagree with you..

February 13, 2008

Mama

My mama sure knows how to cook a good, old-fashioned country breakfast. We had eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy this morning. I pigged out. I LOVE my mama's cooking.

I sometimes wonder if her food is really that good, or if I just like it because I grew up eating it all my life. Naw. I don't wonder. It's really that good.

This morning, she was wearing a stocking cap with a big white snowball on the tassel, the kind that Santa's elves wear. After breakfast, we sat on the back porch while the boys went over to the church playground to try to kill themselves on the monkey-bars. She took her hat off. She is as bald as an egg.

"Mama, you've got a good-looking bald head," I told her. "My head is too damned lopsided. I must have inherited that from my father. I wouldn't be nearly as pretty as you are if all my hair fell out."

"I don't wear a hat because I'm bald," she replied. "My head gets cold. Everybody tells me that I have a pretty head, but I freeze if I'm not wearing a hat. I wear one almost all the time now. I must have 50 of them."

She's having surgery and another round of chemo next month. That's going to be a rough row to hoe, but if anybody can do it, Mama can. She's tough.

A floating turd day

This was a long, boring Monday, hotter than hell's barbecue grill and totally worthless. Things were just THERE, with no crises, no challenges and not much to do. This day sucked like Hoover and seemed to last AT LEAST 72 hours.

I cross three railroad tracks on the way home from work. I got stopped by two trains today. The one on President Street was a pain in the ass, but it passed fairly quickly.

Not so on Highway 21. I sat for 15 minutes in Garden City while a 1,000,000 car-long line of freight rumbled at snail-like speed to the Georgia ports and a gully-washing, frog-strangling thunderstorm fell on my truck. Traffic backed up from here to Florida. I finally went two miles down the road and saw pavement as dry as a popcorn fart.

Do YOU ever have those Fleet enema kinds of days? This was one of mine and I'm just surprised that I didn't have a flat tire on the way home. The omens were there. Fate was pissed at me. I was due to be run over by a pulpwood truck while changing a tire on Highway 21 in the rain. Today SUCKED!

I am going to bed early tonight. Tomorrow HAS to be a better day. If it gets any worse than this, I'll THROW MYSELF under a pulpwood truck just to get it over with.

'Splain this to me

Jack got a gun for Christmas. He told me that it was a .22, but it has an attachment to make it a .21. I've gotta see that thing tomorrow. I've never seen a .21 and I've never seen any .21 ammunition.

Jack becomes confused sometimes.

Quinton didn't make it over to the Crackerbox until well after noon (it seems that what Jennifer wrote in her email about Christmas Day was very fungible, depending on her mood and her memory). In other words, she fucked me over again. What the hell... I am accustomed to that kind of treatment anymore.

We didn't make it to Mom's house because Quinton arrived so late today, but she's making biscuits and gravy in the morning, and we'll be there shortly after first light. I'll probably miss my brother, but his gifts will keep until he visits mama again. I bought him some fine stuff from my friend willy, who runs a most excellent web site if you want to buy musical equipment. Good shit at a fair price is available there.

I saw Jack's rifle today. It's a Crossman .177 pellet gun. The "attachment" he spoke of is a CO2 cartridge, so that he doesn't have to pump the gun. I don't know where he got the .22 and .21 from.

I own one almost exactly like it, and I've used it numerous times to knock squirrels out of my bird feeders and run cats out of my yard. (Pump 10 times for the squirrels-- that equals a dead squirrel. Pump five times for a cat-- that equals a cat with it's ass on fire as it runs away and never comes back.) When you fire it, the rifle makes a very quiet "thumff!" noise, so you can shoot it off your back porch without attracting a lot of attention.

I have no idea what Jack is going to do with that kind of gun. Hell, he'll probably put his eye out if I'm not around to mentor him.

Pure bullshit

Go read this for a nice toxic dose of what is wrong with the environmentalist movement today. Scientists are measuring "pollutants" in human subjects and actually FINDING THEM. Ohmygod! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Nowhere in the article does it state that we're being poisoned, but it damn sure insinuates that position. Just WTF does this crap really mean?

- In March, California researchers reported that San Francisco-area women have three to 10 times as much chemical flame retardant in their breast tissue as European or Japanese women.

- Indiana University researchers reported at the same time that levels in Indiana and California women and infants were 20 times higher than those in Sweden and Norway, which recently banned flame retardant.

- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year released data from 2,500 volunteers tested for 116 pollutants and found such chemicals as mercury, uranium and cotinine, a chemical broken down from nicotine.

Upon what scale are we measuring these results? Parts per billion? I expect that to be the case, and I want people to stop and think for a minute. Until recently, we couldn't even DETECT such minute quantites. Now, we have very sophisticated instruments that CAN detect such minute quantities and "scientists" and dumbfuck environmentalists are using the results to scare the shit out of people who should know better.

1,000,000,000.

That's a billion.

000,000,000,001.

That's one part per billion.

000,000,000,003.

That's THREE TIMES as high as one part per billion! OHMYGOD! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

What pure, unmitigated bullshit these "studies" are. It's not the poison that kills you, people; it's the dose. I am not surprised that these asswipes can detect "pollutants" in anybody they analyze today. We have some really sensitive instruments to do the measuring. But when we're really talking about a drip from an eye-dropper in a 20,000-gallon swimming, pool, I have a difficult time becoming upset and fearing for my life.

February 12, 2008

Things I was thinking

Why do people say, "I'm going to take a shit" when they intend to leave one?

Why are farts funny?

Why does it feel good to scratch my balls?

Why does it feel good to scratch my balls while it feels even BETTER to have a woman play with them?

I feel sorry for wimmen. They can't piss standing up in the woods. Well, some CAN, but most don't.

Why do some turds float while others sink?

Why does a cat bury its shit outside then piss on a potted plant indoors?

Why are there cats? I hate them.

Why are there monkeys? I hate them, too.

What is the meaning of my life? Am I merely a meat-eating, carbon unit who is an ugly bag of mostly water? Hell, that can't be right. I ain't ugly.

Why do bloggers take blogging seriously? 95% of meat-eating carbon units who are ugly bags of mostly water never heard of a blog. My urologist flies his own airplane and HE never heard of a blog until I told him about mine.

Why do we sleep at night and stay active during the day? It can't be completely natural because bats don't do that.

I heard that

Quinton made friends with a deaf boy this weekend. Michael can't hear and he talks funny, but he can read lips. I just had to make him look at me when I wanted to tell him something. He "hears" you if he can see your lips move. He felt right at home in the Crackerbox and he is damned good with a video game.

I wonder about a nine year-old lip-reader. Can he detect a yankee accent?

Christmas eve

One of the most astonishing nights of my life occurred when I was playing guitar for a living and was booked on Christmas Eve at a bar on River Street. I thought the place would be empty all night and the boss would close up early. That's not what happened.

The place was PACKED, all night long. About 11:30 that night, the realization dawned on me that these people had nowhere else to go for Christmas. The crowd wasn't noisy and drunk. It was subdued and really into listening to me play. "Eleanore Rigby" flashed through my mind, but I didn't play that song. I was looking at enough lonely people from the stage without reminding them about it.

Instead, I started playing Christmas carols.

I don't know why I did that, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I started with "Silent Night" and the next thing I know, the entire barroom is singing along with me. We did "White Christmas," "Oh, Holy Night" and "We Three Kings." I finished my gig for the night with "Jingle Bells." Everybody in the bar sang along with every song. I brought the house down.

That night, I felt sorry for those people, because I had family waiting for me and a place to go on Christmas Eve. They didn't. Tonight, I know why they were there and why they liked what I played for them.

Things that make you feel good

I spent this evening assembling monsters, dragons and "slayers" from some fantasy-game I bought for Quinton. He and Jack are having a wonderful time with all of that horrible shit. They like monsters, dragons and slayers.

Quinton ran up to me and gave me a big hug. "Thank you, daddy! Thank you for everything you bought me for Christmas this year!"

"You're welcome, son. I'm glad that you like it. Merry Christmas."

"Daddy, know what? You're not bad for AN UGLY OLD GEEZER!" He took off running down the hallway and laughing his ass off after that remark.

I should have chased him down and tackled his young self, but I worry about hurting my back again. I let him get away with that one. Hell, I AM an ugly old geezer. I damn sure ain't the man I was at 28 years old. I've seen a lot of blood flow under the bridge in my life.

I sometimes see so much of me in my son that I get all teary-eyed just looking at him. He is a pisscutter. He is smart, good-looking and all boy. He's got a good sense of humor, and he is comfortable enough around me to make smart-assed comments and know that I will take them in the spirit he meant for me to feel. This ugly old geezer loves his son.

February 11, 2008

Great moments in my life

My father never played football, but he loved the game and taught me every trick play ever invented. I was playing 12 year-old pony-league ball in a night game on Halloween when we were ahead 7-6 with time running out. I saw the "Sleeper" unfold.

One guy ran into the other team's huddle and TWO GUYS ran out. One went to the bench and the other stayed on the sidelines. I knew what was coming, so I cheated over from by cornerback position to get ready to break for the ball. Sure enough, the quarterback took the snap and threw to the "Sleeper" on the sidelines.

I was moving at the snap, I intercepted the pass and ran it back 60 yards for a touchdown. My daddy told me about that play. I knew what to do.

When I was a senior at Jenkins High School, we played Benedictine Academy and they ran a "muddy huddle" on us. The center broke from the huddle and hunkered down over the ball. The rest of the team broke and lined up on the right hashmark, twenty yards from the center. I ran over there and started yelling, "MUDDY HUDDLE! MUDDY HUDDLE!" and my teammates looked at me as if I were crazy while THEY were lined up in front of that lone center.

The center picked up the ball and "hiked" it twenty yards to a 220 pound running back behind nine blockers. There was nobody but me between him and the goal line. I retreated about 40 yards on the play, fending off blockers and staying on my feet until I got a shot at the runner and took him down on our 20 yard line. We stopped them dead after that and they did not score.

That play should have been a gimme touchdown, but I fucked it up. My daddy taught me that.

Against Groves High School that year, I intercepted a pass and saw a lot of open field in front of me, so I ran as if my ass were on fire toward that orange flag that marked the end zone. The quarterback was a tall, lanky guy who was about to cut me off as I neared my destination. I was one foot off the sideline and I knew that if that big guy hit me, he might knock me out of bounds.

He was closing in around the five yard line. I turned toward HIM, put my head down, racked his ass and carried him into the end zone with me. I never will forget lying on my back in the grass of Grayson Stadium with that quarterback saying, "Whatthefuck?" and seeing the referee signal a touchdown.

When I won the company golf tournament, I did it in a playoff. I stood over a six-foot putt worth the whole enchalada and I could see the dots. About 100 people were watching and I knew as soon as I hit the putt that it was in. I watched it drain and realized that I didn't feel nervous at all.

I am still amazed by that. When I played football, I felt as if every hair on my body was standing up on every play. I played football in full-panic mode. I knew that every play was going to hurt and I wanted to show my coach that I was tough. I stayed in a frenzy physically while I tried to think logically about the game. I was the Monsterman, and I called the defense.

That was my first experience with Cognitive Dissonance.

I once made two free throws in a City Championship basketball game with five seconds left on the clock and my team one point behind.

I was nervous when I did that. I was disgusted when a black lucky bastard fired a half-court shot at the buzzer and hit nothing but net to win the game.

I had to think about what I did. He didn't. Life just ain't fair sometimes.

I've done some good things in 51 years on this planet. The best thing I've ever done is watching cartoons in the living room right now.

Sheer stupidity

I keep loaded firearms all over my house. I also have a soon-to-be 10 year-old boy who visits here with a friend every other weekend. They both know to keep their hands off those guns.

Quinton also knows that you NEVER point a gun at someone unless you intend to shoot that person. You NEVER "assume" a gun is unloaded, even if you think you know damn good and well that it is. Treat every gun as if it were loaded, all the time.

My boy absorbed those lessons. this boy obviously did not. What happened as a result is a tragedy, but it damn sure isn't Beretta's fault.

The kid made three critical mistakes. First of all, he had no business dragging out his father's pistol to show to a friend. The boy should have known better than that. Guns are tools, no different than chainsaws or hammers. You don't wave them around just to be showing off.

Second, the boy obviously did not understand how a semi-automatic pistol works. The bullet in the chamber does NOT fall out when you drop the magazine. You have to reject that one by hand to get it out of the chamber.

Third, he pointed an "unloaded" gun at a friend and pulled the trigger. Why the hell did he do that? If I ever see Quinton even CARRYING his BB gun without the barrel pointed at the ground, I am on his ass like white on rice. Treat EVERY GUN as if it were loaded, and ready to go off, all the time. Even when I clean mine, I'm careful about where the muzzle is pointed. I treat THAT gun as if it were loaded.

I had those lessons pounded into my head from the time I was a kid in Kentucky. I'm trying to teach Quinton the same rules. Guns are NOT dangerous in the right hands, but if you fuck up with one, they are damned well unforgiving. You can't take a bullet back once you fire it.

This kind of crap is pure fodder for the gun-control activists. They love stories such as this one. I hate them.

If a kid fucks up with a gun, don't sue the manufacturer. Horsewhip his daddy for not teaching his boy how to handle a gun.

Interesting email

I haven't seen Dennis for at least ten years now, but he is the person my song "Justice Laid Me Low" is based on. (I sang that one at the blog-meet, just in case anyone was sober enough to remember at the time.) He sent me this missive today:

Rob:
This is Dennis Sparks.
We have not seen each other in several years, but Rick, sent me a link to your Blog site and I read it daily. I wanted to let you know that Negril has changed a lot since your last visit. It has been discovered by the rich college crowd.

I made several visits in the 70s and 80s and it was more civilized each visit. My last trip there in 1990, it had completely changed. Gone are the days of kerosene lamps and driving to Savannah La Mar to make a phone call. They have been replaced with sattelite dishs and cell phones. Sammys place was hit hard by a hurricane and his wife passed. The last time I saw him, he had crawled into a wine bottle.

I hope you find a place there like it was when we first started going there, because I miss that place a lot. Good luck and I am sure you will write all about your trip, so I hope to read you have found a new paradise so I can take my wife there.

At least the waters are still clear and warm and the I assume the ganga is still primo, although I wouldn't know the difference anymore.

At the risk of sounding like a goddam environmentalist, I really wish Sammy's place on the cliffs was just the way I saw it in 1977. No electricity. No phones. Just a cluster of simple rooms with a bed and a kerosene lamp in every one. Sammy had ice delivered to the community cooler about every three days, when the ice truck was running. I learned to drink Red Stripe beer at ambient temperature, because the ice supply was unreliable.

He had a shower in the back yard, which was the only running water I saw there. He had an outhouse for a bathroom. I loved that place. I could wake up in the morning, take about twenty steps and launch myself into the blueberry-popcicle-colored waters of the Carribean from a height of 30 feet. That's a bracing way to awaken in the morning.

Everybody at Sammy's would get together in the evening and ride bicycles up to Rick's, where we drank banana daiquiris and watched the sun go down. We would get fucked-up, then ride back down the mountain trying to hit one of the rock-crabs that run all over the roads. Then, we sat on the cliffs and smoked "spliffs," which are VERY LARGE JOINTS, until we all crawled back to our rooms and nodded out.

I was young, dumb and full of cum back in those days, but I would like to do it again, even though I am an "ugly old geezer" now. I'll still make that 30-foot jump off the cliffs in the morning, and I can still drink Red Stripe at ambient temperature. A spliff will probably ruin me for days, but I'm going to try one anyway. WTF? I don't have to take piss-tests anymore.

I have no idea what Negril is like today. I hope it is not as resortified as Ochos Rios is, but I won't know until I do some exploring. A good taxi driver can show me everything I want to see, and point me toward where I want to go, if I wave some American Greenbacks under his nose. I have the greenbacks.

February 10, 2008

What I like in a woman

I don't like high-heeled shoes. Those things are Chinese torture-contraptions designed to ruin a woman's feet. Don't wear them. I don't give a shit about how good you think they make your legs look. I'm not saying that just because I'm not a tall man. I'm saying it because I've seen the results of wearing mis-fitting shoes for a long time.

I like pretty toes, and high-heeled shoes destroy toes.

Wear sandals. Go barefoot. Forget about that shit you've seen in porno movies and Fredrick's catalogues. You know what's sexy to ME? A natural woman. You don't have to dress up for me. In fact, I would rather that you dressed DOWN for me.

I want a woman who can show good manners in an expensive restaurant and still sit out a thunderstorm under a raincoat on the side of the road with me when we get caught riding bicycles after dinner. I want a woman who doesn't primp for thirty minutes in the bathroom mirror after I told her that she looked good when she woke up in the morning.

I want a woman who likes herself and doesn't feel the need to prove that point to anyone else. I'll pick that virture up right away, when I meet such a woman. They are easy to recognize.

Catfish email on golf

The following is forwarded not to offend baseball, basketball, football or soccer fans. It is, rather, an attempt to put everything in its proper perspective.

Ever wonder why golf is growing in popularity and why people who don't even play go to tournaments or watch it on TV?

These truisms may shed light:

+ Golf is an honorable game, with the overwhelming majority of players being honorable people who don't need referees.

+ Golfers don't have some of their players in jail every week.

+ Golfers don't scratch their privates on the golf course.

+ Golfers don't kick dirt on, or throw bottles at, other people.

+ Professional golfers are compensated in direct proportion to how well they play.

+ Golfers don't get per diem and two seats on a charter flight when they travel between tournaments.

+ Golfers don't hold out for more money, or demand new contracts, because of another player's deal.

+ Professional golfers don't demand that the taxpayers pay for the courses on which they play.

+ When golfers make a mistake, nobody is there to cover for them or back them up.

+ The PGA Tour raises more money for charity in one year than the National Football League does in two.

+ You can watch the best golfers in the world up close, at any tournament, including the majors, all day, every day for $25 or $30. The cost for a seat in the nosebleed section at the Super Bowl will cost around $300 or more.

+ You can bring a picnic lunch to the tournament golf course, watch the best in the world and not spend a small fortune on food and drink. Try that at one of the taxpayer funded baseball or football stadiums. If you bring a soft drink into a ballpark, they'll give you two options -- get rid of it or leave.

+ In golf ! you cannot fail 70% of the time and make $9 million a season, like he best baseball hitters (.300 batting average) do.

+ Golf doesn't change its rules to attract fans.

+ Golfers have to adapt to an entirely new playing area each week.

+ Golfers keep their clothes on while they are being interviewed.

+ Golf doesn't have free agency.

+ In their prime, Greg Norman, Arnold Palmer and other stars, would shake your hand and say they were happy to meet you. In his prime Jose Canseco wore T-shirts that read "Leave Me Alone."

+ You can hear birds chirping on the golf course during a tournament.

+ At a golf tournament, (unlike at taxpayer-funded sports stadiums and arenas) you won't hear a steady stream of four letter words and nasty name calling while you're hoping that no one spills beer on you.

+ Tiger Woods can hit a golf ball three times as far as Barry Bonds can hit a baseball! .

Finally, here's a slice of golf history you might enjoy.

Why do full-length golf courses have 18 holes, and not 20, or 10 or an even dozen?

During a discussion among the club's membership board at St. Andrews in 1858, one of the members pointed out that it takes exactly 18 shots to polish off a fifth of Scotch. By limiting himself to only one shot of Scotch per hole, the Scot figured a round of golf was finished when the Scotch ran out.

Job offer

I received a phone call today from a business aquaintence who was worried about my future. He heard about what happened to me at work and put out a couple of feelers for me. It seems that there is a small, single-adsorption (that's NOT a misspelled word), double-pass sulfuric acid plant that is searching for a superintendent now. I could walk in and have that job tomorrow.

The place makes only about 400 tons per day when it's running flat-out. It's a fertlizer plant, so they don't need a whole lot of acid to digest their chemicals. They sell the leftovers and use the steam in their process. (Steam from waste-heat boilers is a vaulable by-product from manufacturing sulfuric acid.)

I supervised a 1,000-ton-per-day sulfuric acid plant for six years. We needed 500 tons per day to use in the plant and WE sold the leftovers. You do the math (I'm an English major. I don't do math.). I am very familiar with loading and shipping sulfuric acid by truck or rail car, and I am DOT trained to the Nth degree. I am HAZWOPER certified to the level of Incident Commander. I know how to run an acid plant, and I have all the credentials.

I turned the job down.

I don't want to do that shit anymore. I don't have to, I don't want to, so I ain't gonna. It's nice to know that a good, high-paying job is available if I want it, but I can say "NO!" now, and that's exactly what I did. I want to write now.

I don't believe that I'll need another paying job for the rest of my life.

February 09, 2008

The dining table

When Jennifer and I first married, we had a really shitty dining table. It had a glass top and four spindley little legs supporting it. If you leaned on it wrong, the sumbitch was liable to flip over and fall on the floor. But we made do with what we had.

One Sunday afternoon, Jennifer's father called me and asked if I would help him move some new furniture to his house the next day. I told him that I would, so after work, I met him at the furniture store. Got-Dam! Earline had gone nuts in the place and bought china cabinets, tables, chairs and chests-of-drawers that weighed a ton apiece.

We managed to get it all onto two pickup trucks after much manual labor and clever positioning of the goods. I drove my load to Garden City and helped Ted move it all into the house while Earline stood there and pointed to where she wanted it placed. We were at that job until 10:00 that night.

We had to move a lot of old furniture out of the house to make room for the new. One piece was a dining table with six chairs that Ted made by hand in his woodworking shop. The table was a beautiful piece of cherry and the chairs were made from black walnut. He told me that I could have it for helping him move all the furniture that day.

"Ted, you could sell that for a lot of money," I told him.

"I'm giving it to you and Jennifer," he replied. "The table you have now sucks. You need a better one. Take it, and call it a late wedding present."

I took the table and chairs.

Ted died shortly thereafter, and Earline got rid of the ramshackle mobile home on Sunset Creek down at Midway. She bought a fancy double-wide and changed the river-shack into a palace. She made the place where wet bathing suits and cigarette smoke were par for the course into some womanized, fuzz-covered icky-joint, where you were afraid to fart.

My last trip to that place occurred when Earline came to the house and wanted Ted's table for her Midway palace. "Ted just loaned that to you," she said. "I want it back now because it would look PERFECT in the new trailer." Jennifer told me not to argue about it.

I packed it up and hauled it to Midway. Jennifer and I bought another dining table that day.

I am certain that the table looks PERFECT in that fluff-palace, where it is used maybe three times per year. I never forgave that woman for taking that table. Ted GAVE THAT TO ME. He made it with his own hands and wanted his grandson to eat off it. He wanted me and Jennifer to eat off it. He wanted it to be a damn well-used dining room table.

So, if I snapped at my mother-in-law a few times when I was married, I had a damn good reason.

The inevitable

Did you ever reach a point in your life where wondered. "how the fuck did I get HERE?" and then sit down to analyze the situation carefully? I have. Every time, I discovered the Truth of the Inevitable.

You don't see it while it's happening, but it's there. It's like dominos being lined up for one of those cosmic knock-down shows. It's gonna happen, sooner or later, and there is nothing you really can do to stop it. Once that first domino topples, the rest go behind it until they all fall down. Then, you're left with that mess of fallen dominoes on the floor.

Look back on how they all lined up and you can see the pattern, now that you've experienced the mess. You didn't see it before it happened, but you weren't looking for a pattern at the time. You trusted. You believed. You were a goddam fool. What happened was inevitable.

I don't know when the dominoes begin to form a line, but when that happens, they will topple. That fact is inevitable. From the time a person stands that first tile on end in a relationship, it's only a matter of time before they put more and more in the line, then feel compelled to tip the first one.

I've always said that wimmin carry Green-Stamp books in their heads. They remember every fuck-up you ever made in your life, because they put a Green Stamp in their book to remember it by. They forget everything good you ever did with a wave of a hand, but that goddam Green Stamp book is forever.

"You bastard!"

"Huh?"

"You never should have talked to my mama the way you did on Christmas Eve three years ago."

"I don't remember Christmas Eve three years ago. What brought that up?"

"You bastard!"

See? She was into the Green Stamp book and started lining up the dominoes. Forget the fact that I fed her mama supper the previous weekend and she herself was wearing over $3,000 worth of jewlery I bought for her. That remark I made to her mama three years ago SUDDENLY DEFINES EVERYTHING ABOUT ME. And she has a Green Stamp in the book to prove it.

Moonshine

Boudreaux been fish'n down by de bayou all day an he done run outa night
crawlers. He be bout reddy to leave when he seen a snake wit a big frog in
his mout. He knowed dat dem big bass fish like frogs so he decided to steal dat froggie. Dat snake, he be a cotton moufed water moccasin so he had to be real careful or he'd get bit.

He snuk up behine de snake and grabbed him roun de haid. Dat ole snake din't lak dat one bit. He squirmed and wrapped hisself roun Boudreaux's arm try'n to get hisself free.

But Boudreaux, him had a real good grip on his haid, yeh. Well, Boudreaux pried his mouf open and got de frog and puts it in his bait can. Now, Boudreaux knows dat he cain't let go dat snake or his gonna bite him good, but he had a plan.

He reach into de back pocket of his bib overhauls and pulls out a pint a moonshine likker. He pour some draps into de snakes mouf. Well, dat snake's eyeballs roll back in his haid and his body go limp. Wif dat Boudreaux toss's dat snake into de bayou. den he goes back to fishin.

A while later Boudreaux dun feel sumpin tappin on his barefoot toe. He slowly look down and dare dat water mocassin was with TWO frogs in hit's mouf.

February 08, 2008

How I met my neighbor

When I went back to my urologist six months after my surgery and complained about a dead dick, he suggested the fix-a-flat option. My late friend Steve Hamby told me all about THAT after his surgery, so I said, "Hell yeah! Why not?" I was really missing a genuine hard-on by then.

A very businesslike nurse came into the room, grabbed my limp dick, stretched it out nearly as long as its former length and said, "Pay attention. You need to learn to do this." Then she picked up a needle and loaded it from a vial.

I paid close attention, as least as much as I could with my eyes closed and every muscle in my body tensed tightly enough to strike a kitchen match on. She gave me the shot and it didn't hurt much.

Then she said, "Watch this video and we'll check back on you in ten minutes." She plugged the video into a 12" VCR and I expected PORNO! What I got was a guy using a suction pump and a rubber band to simulate an erection.

That didn't matter. The juice was taking effect. The nurse told me that I might need to "play with myself" to get things going right, and I've never had a problem with THAT, so I did. Roscoe got hard. Roscoe started to resemble his old self. Roscoe also started to hurt like hell.

I stopped playing with him. I pulled two chairs together and assumed a fetal position while I broke out in a cold sweat. It was like having a terrible phallus-cramp that hurt badly enough to make me want to puke. I thought I was going to pass out. THAT'S how bad it was.

I was curled up that way when the doctor and nurse came back to check on me. The nurse said, "Let me see what you've got there," which would be a GREAT LINE in a bar, but not so good in the doctor's office. She grabbed that blue-steel boner of mine and shook it, saying, "Oh! You'll have no problem achieving penetration with THAT."

I screamed and told her to turn it loose. It HURT to have a woman touch my dick. I knew that something was terribly wrong.

The doctor said that I would need to adjust the dosage to fit me through trial and error and he gave me a bagfull of Celebrix to take before a shot and set of muscle relaxers to take if things went wrong. I could tell right then that this fix-a-flat science was really precice.

I waddled out, paid my bill and drove home, praying that I wouldn't have a wreck and be required to explain the throbbing, painful hard-on I had at the time. I could see some asshole EMT looking at my burned, dead body on the highwayand saying, "He must have died happy! Look at his boner!"

That thing had a mind of its own.

I got home, put on a pair of gym shorts and sat on the couch. That's when my doorbell rang. I answered it. Sherry, my across the street neighbor, came by to visit. She wanted a glass of wine a place to get away from her grandchildren. I told her that she was welcome but I might not be good company. I was in pain.

She asked, "Why?" and I half-masted my shorts and said "THIS IS WHY!" The damned thing was about to crawl out on its own anyway, so I showed it to her. She was fascinated with my problem. She saw no problem at all. She said "If you don't mind me saying, every man should have a problem like that."

That's when I had to explain that this was a medically-induced, artificial and not granted on a guarantee basis thing that I really didn't like. She said, "I can handle that. Can YOU?"

No, I couldn't.

That's why I'm about to never have to do it again.

I tried every bit of that shit. I didn't want to be impotent. I wanted to fuck when I felt like it, just like the good old days.

Growing things

When I lived in my one-bedroom apartment while playing guitar for a living, a lot of wimmen scolded me for having no plants in my home. They started coming over and bringing me plants to brighten up the place. I managed to kill everything they brought.

Once, Yvonne and Dora brought over something called an "air plant." They told me that it was perfect for my home because nobody had to do a damn thing to it. It was hardy as hell and lived off air. I managed to kill that one, too. I was convinced that I had a Black Thumb.

I started gardening as soon as I moved to Effingham County. I come from a long line of farmers, and once I started getting my hands dirty in the soil, I discovered that I liked doing that sort of thing. I also discovered that I was GOOD AT IT! I didn't have a Black Thumb after all. I had a Green Thumb.

I started out small, just planting some squash, tomatoes, zuchinni and cucumbers. My garden was about 30' by 16' and it produced a bounty of fresh vegetables. My neighbors were amazed. I was proud of myself.

When I had the mini-farm, I was up to tilling almost half an acre and growing corn, beans, okra, potatoes, squash, zuchinni, tomatoes, cucumber, cantelope, watermelon, green onions and three different varieties of peppers in the summer. I learned to fight off the vermin, the bugs and the critters that tried to destroy my crops. I learned to fertilize and apply herbicide. I learned when to water and when not to.

I also grew lettuce, carrots and turnips in the spring. (I LOVE turnip greens) I learned to barter some of my crop for what somebody else had growing down the road. After the deer stomped my watermelons one year, I traded a five-gallon bucket of potatoes for three mighty fine watermelons. I got a bushel of okra in exchange for a bushel of Kentucky Wonder beans. I traded a big grocery bag full of corn for a big grocery bag full of cantelopes. (yeah, the deer got my cantelopes, too, when they got the watermelons.)

I miss feeling my fingers in the soil today. I have enough land to plant a big garden, but my heart just isn't in it anymore. I had a garden my first year in the Crackerbox and I ended up giving almost everything I grew to the neighbors. I can't eat it all, and I don't have a family to feed anymore. Everybody around here grows tomatoes in pots, but they don't grow enough of anything to barter.

What the fuck. I may plant a garden next year, but I may not. Tending plants is a lot of work. I enjoy doing it, I'm good at it, but I really don't see the point anymore.

Besides, I planted one really good seed in my life, and I see him growing smart and strong, as he plays basketball in the driveway today. His name is Quinton.

February 07, 2008

Power outage day

This one looked good. The midnight shift guys shut everthing down the way I asked them to. When I arrived at 0430 this morning, The Grand Design was coming together. I was proud.

All of the work I planned for my area was finished by 4:30 this afternoon. It was one of the slickest, most effective shutdowns I've ever been involved in, at least in the area of MY responsiblity.

Unfortunately for me, a few other people didn't spend the time and effort I did to get ready for this. I made it home at 2205 tonight. (Yeah. WELL after dark.) Not one single problem that kept me out there for more than my OSHA "time-out" of 16 hours had ANYTHING to do with my game plan. It was people doing OTHER jobs that AFFECTED my area that caused me grief.

They didn't run their "DON'T FORGET TO DO THIS" notebook through the dryer. They never had a notebook to begin with. Those people rope goats and allow screeching monkeys to hump footballs on Power Outage Day. I was caught in their vortex and swept right down the toilet with them.

I am too tired, sweaty, burnt-out, hoarse (from screaming over the radio all day) and disgusted to blog about it tonight. But you can bet your sweet ass I will the first chance I get.

Something personal

Yeah, I'm making a big deal about getting a pump installed in less than two weeks. If I sound as if I am obsessing about it, I am.

I've always been a vigorous man. I played every kind of sport, including water polo, did a lot of outdoor activities, including hiking to the top of Hangover Mountain FIVE TIMES, and once up that trail usually is enough for anybody. I became at home in the woods and enjoyed shooting firearms from an early age. I was a writer and a musician. I was willing to try anything once.

I also liked wimmen. A LOT. I was quite a swordsman in my guitar-playing days and after I read some Wilt Chamberlain-type claims of incredible bedding, I tried to make a list of the women I have pleasured in my life. I ran out of names to go with the faces. I remember the times and the places, or at least 85% of them, but I was heavily into the vampire life in those days. I drank, drugged and debauched, stayed up until sunrise and slept until dark. I wish I could go back and do it ALL over again in that 20-something body I had back then.

When I settled down and went straight, I thought those wild days were behind me. I thought I would become Ward Cleaver. But I didn't. I became an ex-guitar player with a wife and a child and a real job. It didn't work out the way I planned it.

I was ambitious. When I first made supervisor, I knew how ignorant I was about things I needed to know. So, I put in incredible amounts of unpaid overtime just to learn from the guys who DID know. If I had a problem on my shift that I couldn't resolve, I stayed over to watch what happened when the seasoned foreman took over. I learned a lot that way.

I remember not seeing my father for a week once, when I was eight years old. He was pulling sixteen-hour shifts 1500 to 0700 and he slept while I was at school and was gone back to work by the time I got home. My mama praised him for that.

"We've been living tight, boys, and daddy is making money while it's there to be made. He does that because he loves us, and don't you ever forget that. Your daddy is a HARD WORKER. And where I come from, if you ain't a hard worker, we say "PFFFTTTT!" on you."

Mama would have said "SHIT ON YOU," if she wasn't my mama. She is a hillbilly lady. She thinks it, but she doesn't say it. That's the difference between her and me. If I think it, I say it.

And PFFFTTTT! on you if you don't like it.

But she and my father taught me to work hard if you expect any results. Hard work has given me everything I ever got in life, including this blog. I post a lot, and that is hard work. I was raised to work hard.

My first ex-wife didn't think that way. She declared that I was putting my job before my family, which I thought was hoot because she became the QUEEN BEE, unable to work anymore, but capable of putting me in $17,000 worth of credit card debt in two years. Her response? "I'm worth it."

Trust me. She wasn't worth it.

My second ex-wife was my one TRUE LOVE and understanding her is difficult, after seeing all of my shit stacked in boxes, with labels on them, and about two week's worth of my clothes piled in my truck. She is efficient. She is very good-looking. She's a bloodless cunt, too, which helps with that efficiency quotient. Her outstanding bloodlessness is much admired at work. My company WANTS people like her.

She is an attack-hound now, and she is perfectly matched with her job.

I've had to put up will all the shit she gave me, all the snotty crap, all the fucking around for 20 miserable months, and it's about to change.

Some women find me attractive, but I don't court and spark when I know that my dick is dead. Mine is. As dead as a dick can get, when the nerves that do the good stuff are severed. I have a couple of wimmen who simply enjoy my company, and I've used fix-a-flat on both of them. I also told them both that I wouldn't do that anymore.

They didn't run screaming. They still come over to visit. Hell, I may have a dead dick, but I've kept my tongue in shape. BWHAHAHAHAHAAA! Yes, I have become a cunning linguist in the meantime.

If I can talk them BOTH into coming over at the same time to check out the bionic dick, I will be a happy man.

Get a goddamned job

I learned three talents in my life that guarantee me a job anywhere I travel in this country. I won't make a lot of money performing those tasks, and my paycheck might not meet "living wage" standards of some Democrat assholes, but I can find a job if I want one. I won't starve to death.

I am a good short-order cook. I worked my way through college flipping hamburgers. I can tend bar. I did that job when I didn't have a musical gig lined up for a month or so. I can operate a cash register and make it balance at the end of my shift. I never stole from an employer.

Tell me that I can't find a fucking job SOMEWHERE if I want one.

What you will NOT see me doing, even if I was stone-assed broke and sleeping in a cardboard box, is standing by the side of the road and holding up a WILL WORK FOR FOOD sign. BULLSHIT!

Simple bliss

The temperature dropped into the lower 20s last night, which is very cold for southeast Georgia. I went outside after dark and set up a sprinkler to spray water on my roof so that it would drip down on a couple of bushes I have planted in front of the living room windows.

I had icicles hanging from the eaves, ice all over the bushes and a goddam NHL hockey-rink on my sidewalk this morning. I almost busted my ass when I went outside to turn the sprinkler off. I came close to slip-sliding away.

Quinton and Jack are outside playing in the ice as I write, and all the other neighborhood kids are coming over to see the winter glory. When you live in a sub-tropical climate where sweat is more common than ice, you become really entertained by icicles and frozen bushes. I just hope that nobody falls down on the sidewalk, breaks a bone, and has parents who want to sue the shit out of me.

What the hell. That's a risk worth taking when I see the fun the kids are having out there.

February 06, 2008

Power outage

Tomorrow is the annual plant shitdown where we kill EVERYTHING and do the work you can do only once per year. This will be my 18th P.O.D. where I was intricately involved in the scheduling, shutdown and startup of the plant.

I've done everything I could this year to make it nasty, brutish and short. That's the best you can hope for on a Power Outage. If you DON'T plan well, you end up with a combination of a goat-fuck while a screeching monkey humps a football and the sky falls on your head. That gets ugly. I've seen it happen.

I kept copious notes over the years about what NOT TO FORGET, but I laundered them to sawdust right after the last P.O.D. by attempting to do my laundry without taking everything out of my pants pockets. My Notebook of Knowledge evaporated. 18 years of written lore ended up stuck as bits of chewed paper in the dryer filter. This year, I had to do it from memory.

But I'm not senile yet.

If I fuck this up, I deserve to be fired. It's my goddam job to get this shit right. If I don't know what to do after 18 years of doing it, they need to jettison me and reload. Call bullshit all you want to, but I can do it from memory. I ain't no virgin.

If I sing a different tune tomorrow, that's because I'm not as smart as I think I am. But if I crow, give me credit.

I have the easiest job in the world when everything runs right. If it's running PERFECTLY, I don't do anything. I get paid for knowing what to do when things DON'T run right. I get paid for handling days like tomorrow. And I earn every cent I make FOR THE YEAR in those situations.

That's why I'll be at work at 4:30 in the morning and stay until all the jobs are done. I planned it all. I'll be there until everything is complete.

Bedtime story

I'm diving for the sheets after this. I have a busy day that probably will last until night tomorrow. But I have to admit one thing...

I saw that doctor today with a big chip on my shoulder. He cut the wrong things when he performed surgery on me, and I didn't give a shit about his reputation as being one of the best in the Southeast at what he does. He had a Power Outage Day on ME and he fucked it up. I've been without power for 20 months as a result. I was NOT impressed.

I suppose that I could chalk up every bit of what I've been through during that time as a "learning experience" if I were naive enough to believe that shit was GOOD thing. Trust me. It isn't.

Wimmen! How many men do YOU KNOW who get you hot and bothered and then say, "Wait a minute. Just let me give myself a shot in the dick and we can continue with this seduction. Wait here and stay horny while I go fetch the elixer, ready a needle, shoot myself and wait for it to take effect."

I did that. Lots of times. It was humiliating and sometimes produced results that I didn't like. Try a six-hour erection that feels like a muscle cramp in your leg. Try curling up in a fetal ball with tears in your eyes until that evil thing goes away while a nekkid, horny woman asks, "What did I do wrong?" and you can't even talk because of the pain. I've been there and done that. It sucked.

I will never do that again.

I threw away all of my fix-a-flat crap three month ago. I said "never again" and I meant it.

When wimmen come over to the Crackerbox now, they know that they can spend the night and just snuggle with me. They like that, and so do I.

Bread bowl

Every time I think that I have Jennifer figured out, she throws me another curve ball. She brought Quinton to my house on Friday evening an hour earlier than I expected her to arrive. Usually, she drops Quinton off in my driveway with his gear for the weekend, and she simply splits, without a word exchanged between us.

Quinton didn't go to basketball practice that evening because he has a cold (it doesn't appear to be very bad to me). Jennifer came to the door to deliver Quinton's medicine in case he needed it this weekend (he hasn't). She also offered me a bowl of banana bread and pound cake that she baked for the holidays.

Why did she do that?

I wouldn't take it from HER. Quinton grabbed the bread bowl and put it on the coffee table. "You'll really like the banana bread," he said. "Mama says that it's one of your favorites."

Yes, I love banana bread and I'm the one who bought Jennifer the bread-maker several years ago for a Christmas present. We baked a lot of exotic breads back on the mini-farm. I once loved the way the kitchen smelled with home-made bread baking.

I won't take a bite of what she brought. I'm allowing the boys to eat every bit of it, and what they don't eat, I'll feed to my goddam dog. I don't know why she brought that shit over here in the first place. She won't even talk to me anymore.

I won't tell Quinton why I refuse to eat the bread (it's probably very good), but it's a matter of principle to me. I don't want a damn thing that woman has to offer.

February 05, 2008

The dead shall rise again

I had a 4:15 appointment with my urologist today. I got there at 4:10. I read damn near every outdated magazine in the waiting room before I finally saw him at 5:45.

It was worth the wait. When I told him that I had no problems with the surgery except for the BIG ONE (or LACK of a big one anymore), he started talking about different fix-a-flat elixers and even some disgusting suction-pump-with-rubber-band devices as a cure for my problem. I cut right to the chase.

"Doc, excuse my French, but I want a fucking pump. I've read all about them, seen one in action and corresponded with people who have them. I've also corresponded with WIMMEN who know all about the pump. They say guys who DON'T need one should get one anyway. It's more reliable and enduring than what Mother Nature gives most men. I NEED one. I want that, and I want it NOW! Or at least as soon as I can get one."

I was stunned. The doctor visibly brightened and said, "I never like to suggest that course of action right off the bat, because it involves surgery, but in your case, it probably is the best way to go. You want the three-piece device, don't you?"

"If that's the two-pronged bionic tool with reservoir and internal pump, you got the right one in mind. Nothing but the best for Roscoe."

"That's the one I was going to recommend. It really is a very effective prosthesis. Very neat device."

It appears that my insurance will cover the surgery. I asked for a fast-track path to make it happen, and I'll have an appointment made tomorrow (the nurse who handles that detail stuff was gone home by the time the doc saw me) and I should be sporting a brand-new bionic dick within the next two weeks.

It's in-and-out day surgery with a few unpleasant days of recovery, then you're good to go full-tilt boogie in a few weeks. I can handle the surgery and the unpleasant days of recovery. I handled having my guts ripped out and 20 months with a dead dick. This part looks like a piece of cake.

I am overjoyed with the way things went today. If I hadn't fucked up that first appointment two months ago, I already would be back in the saddle again.

Maybe nobody else cares about this, but I DO. Well, I ALSO know a couple of wimmen who want to see the results...

The oracle

Oh dear. Dear, dear me. The Federal Government does nothing for you? Oh come on Rob. How about funding that army you're so proud of? How about providing a decent education for your son? I know you piss and moan about a lot of the "liberal" stuff they tell him, but I don't see you rushing off to teach him his long division.
And of course this doesn't include the FDA checking to make sure those Hot Pockets you eat aren't tainted, or the EPA making sure you aren't poisoned by lethal fumes, or your state government keeping up your roads, stoplights, trash collection, police and fire departments, etc. I can abide mistakes, but you're just plain ignorant.

I'm all for my government maintaining the best standing army in the world. I'm willing to pay for that. But I realize that the EPA is a political advocacy-group in the pocket of the Sierra Club, public schools are a fucking joke and the FDA kills thousands of people every year by being a bureaucratic glacier in dealing with medical breakthroughs.

But you are right about one thing. I DON'T teach my son long division. Our "number game" goes more like this, with no pencil and paper allowed.

"QUINTON! NUMBER GAME! What is twelve plus ten, times two, divided by eleven?" He'll think for a minute and say, "That's FOUR!"

Yeah, you're right, prickbreath. I don't teach my son long division, at least not anymore. We left that elementary shit behind a long time ago, once he mastered it. If the problems aren't complicated, he doesn't enjoy solving them. And he didn't learn what he knows in public school. He learned it from ME and his mama.

Oh, "dear me." You never got anything more than a public school education, did you? I'll bet that YOU couldn't do the math problems I throw at my nine year-old son. Blow your asshole self up and call me ignorant.

Two turds in the doghouse

Actually, HE didn't do it. Hillary "borrowed" a cigarette lighter from her mama's bedroom drawer and the bunch of wild hellions started a "campfire" in my back yard. I saw what they were doing and I told Quinton that he was in charge. I didn't mind them having a campfire, but I expected him to take care of it. "You've seen me build a fire 100 times," I told him. "You know what to do."

I believed that he did. He didn't.

He and Jack became distracted when the wind blew up their asses and took their brains away. They went off to shoot a basketball and left Jack's little sister Kiley around the fire. I'm still not sure what happened next, because after I put out the fire (with the help of a very alert and polite neighbor, who jumped his fence with a shovel in his hand when he saw me battling the blaze), finger-pointing went everywhere.

"Kiley threw burning sticks into the woods!"

"Jack was supposed to put the fire out!"

"Hillary was supposed to be watching Kiley!"

I cut through all the bullshit. I sent the girls home and told the boys to get their butts into the house. I sat them down and administered a tounge-lashing that I wish I had recorded. I talked about responsibility and trust, disappointment and anger. I told them that I expected more from them than what I saw today. I told them that a moment of carelessness such as what they displayed could have burned down somebody's home and landed me in jail. I waxed eloquent.

By the time I was finished, Quinton was crying and Jack was as shrunk-up as a spider on a hot stove. I then banished them to Quinton's room until I decide to let them out of prison. They are suffering horribly in there, playing video games, but I believe that I got my point across.

Slobber in my ears

I let the boys out of prison to eat supper this evening, and as soon as they were finished with the meal, they launched a Wet Willie attack on me. They are getting smarter and stronger. I almost lost that battle.

They put me in a pincher movement, where I was surrounded. If I went for Quinton, Jack got me from behind. If I went for Jack, Quinton did the same thing. I finally grabbed them both and wrestled them to the floor, where I extracted my revenge. They went down fighting, still poking slobber-covered fingers at my ears until I subdued them and made them cry "UNCLE!" three times before I let them up.

I am getting too old for this shit. My back still hurts and both of those boys are like coiled springs-- nothing but muscle and bone. A year ago, I could handle them with one hand. Now, they are on the verge of learning to whup my ass. I need to find a graceful way to bow out of these rasslin' games before I start to lose.

February 04, 2008

Will work for food

I saw one of those con-men on the street near Oglethorpe Mall one day when I was living in southside Savannah. He was holding the sign, "WILL WORK FOR FOOD" and I pulled over. He walked up to my car. I was not surprised by what happened next.

"I need my grass cut," I said. "I'll feed you a steak dinner if you'll do that for me, and you can use my lawn mower and my gas. When you're finished with the job and finished with your meal, I'll drive you anywhere you want to go."

"Um... could you, like, spare a couple of dollars?" he replied.

"WHAT? I thought you're standing here offering to work for food. I'm offering you food to do a job. Isn't that what your sign says?"

"Yeah, man... but I really could use a couple of dollars. I've got a wife and kids." He put an especially pitiful-looking expression on his face.

"Okay," I said. "Tell me where your wife and kids are and I'll feed them ALL, right after you cut my grass. I'll even let you take the leftover food with you so the young'uns will have something to eat tomorrow."

"Can't you just spare a couple of bucks? That's all I'm asking. A couple of bucks."

I didn't give the panhandling bastard a dime. He didn't want to work for food. He was making a pretty fair income begging on the side of the road. Why the fuck should HE work? He had plenty of people such as the dickhead I linked below GIVING him money and goods for doing nothing except appearing pitiful.

The Savannah police arrested the guy for some minor offense a week or so later and the truth came out. He was fleecing compassionate people for almost $500 per week running his con and he NEVER WORKED FOR FOOD.

My aching ass. Some people really do fall off turnip trucks every day.

What's wrong

Here is an interesting post, because it's one of the few things Jennifer and I ever argued about when we were married. [Ed. Blog no longer exists.] We've feminized the public schools so much that nobody is supposed to stand up to a bully anymore. "Zero Tolerance" equals zero brains to me.

I taught Quinton to fight.

He came crying to me one day on the mini-farm because one of his "friends" punched him in the face for no good reason. I asked Quinton what he did about it. "I came and told YOU," he replied.

"You get no sympathy from me," I said. "If you let somebody punch you in the face and you go running to daddy all your life, you'd better get real tough, real fast, because a lot of people will punch you. What do you expect ME to do about it? Go punch his daddy? Go punch HIM? No, sir. Life doesn't work that way. If you can't handle this crisis, I'll tell Michael to go home and never come back again. But if I were you, I'd go out there and mop up the yard with him. I'd make him think twice before he ever punched me again."

I had to pull Quinton off of Michael a couple of minutes later. Quinton beat the boy like a drum and I was PROUD OF HIM FOR DOING IT.

Unlike Jennifer, I would rather see Quinton kicked out of school for standing up for himself than become a fucking doormat that bullies wipe their feet on because of "rules." Schools had a different philosophy when I was growing up. Administrators EXPECTED boys to get into fights (boys always have and they always will) and the administrators didn't try to deny human nature with some kind of assless, nutless "zero-tolerance" policy.

Learning to stand up for yourself is a lesson that will carry you far in life, too. Schools should teach "I Don't Have to Take This Shit- 101" instead of the crap they are spooning down children's throats today. Turn the other cheek, my ass. You hit ME and I'm going to hit you back, so fast that you won't see it coming.

My dear, departed father told me something that I still remember, and that lesson has benefited me all my life. "Son, there ain't no such thing as a fair fight, outside a boxing ring. You fight to win, and you use whatever you have to use to do it."

Lower production

Blogging may be curtailed for the next couple of days. I had a debauched weekend. I fell in with bad companions who corrupted me. We raided Randall's liquor store for buttershot schnapps and tequila, then went out to eat at the Sea Grill Friday night, then ordered a delivery of pizza, hot wings and breadsticks for breakfast on Saturday afternoon, after my guests finally strugged out of bed.

I was awake and blogging at 4:30 that morning. I blogged for a while, drank a couple of Bloody Marys, then shut down the computer and crawled back into bed to catch up with my friends. I was fortunate to have a domestic goddess here, who took one look at my kitchen and said, "EWWWWW! I can't STAND THIS MESS!" and cleaned it up for me.

While she was being a domestic goddess in the kitchen, I was holding weighty political discussions with her husband. We were solving all the problems of the world when I heard a shriek.

"Goddam it, Smith! What is THIS SHIT?" I scurried to see what she had found.

"Uh... that's my laundry room." She had the door open and was shooting me lightning bolts from her eyes.

"What's all that shit on the floor?"

"Uh... that would be my laundry," I explained.

"That's not a LAUNDRY-ROOM!" she replied. "It's a SHIT-HOLE! How do you live like this?"

I attempted to explain how I really didn't give a shit what my laundry room looked like as long as I had clean clothes to wear to work, and how I was really going to clean the place up some day, and how I pulled clothes out of the dryer and let the ones I didn't need at the time drop to the floor, where I left them, because I didn't need to wear them and that pile just kept getting bigger and bigger and...

"Smith, GO AWAY! You REALLY need a woman to take care of you. Do you know that? You are DISGUSTING!"

I went away. She cleaned up my laundry room and redid all the wrinkled clothes on the floor and hung them on hangers in my closet. She went to my bedroom for about 30 minutes and said, "SMITH! COME HERE!" I obeyed.

"You now have UNDERWEAR in this drawer, SOCKS in this drawer, T-SHIRTS in this drawer and WORK SHIRTS on hangers in THAT CLOSET. All your blue jeans are washed and folded in THAT CLOSET. Don't you EVER make me do this again."

"Will you vacuum my carpet now?" I asked.

I don't know what she threw at me but I dodged it and ran. I heard a lot of muttering about "shithead" and "swine" coming from the bedroom, but she eventually emerged saying, "Smith, you REALLY SUCK sometimes."

I responded, "Well, I guess a blowjob is out of the question, isn't it?"

I had to leave my own home for a while after that, while all kinds of Donald Duck squawking came from inside. But I got a lot accomplished. I changed the oil in my truck, trimmed my driveway and worked on my bronze-god suntan. I finally worked up the nerve to stick my head back in my own front door and ask, "Is it safe?"

Several snorts of buttershot had mellowed my housekeeper to the point where she hurled only threats and NOT hard, solid objects at my head. Boy, she is a sensitive one.

My house looks pretty good right now. I am PROUD of what I accomplished this weekend.

But I have an appointment with my urologist tomorrow at 5:00 and I have a complete plant shutdown to handle on Wednesday. I need to be at work around 0430 Wednesday morning. If I blog tomorrow, it will be brief. If I blog anything on Wednesday evening it'll be because the shutdown went as planned, which it never does.

I may just have to refer you to my archives or my blogroll. SMITH is going to be busy for the next two days.

February 03, 2008

Me on religion

I don't believe in God, I don't believe in heaven and I don't believe in ANY kind of afterlife. I believe that when you die, the lights go out and they don't come back on again. You're worm food after that.

I'll argue politics until I am blue in the face and I'll call you all kinds of creative, semi-obscene names if I believe that you are an ignorant fucktard because you are PROUD of voting TWICE for Bill Clinton. You fit the profile of most trolls I read on other people's sites. You may as well have "DICKWIT ARE ME" tattooed on your forehead. I'll call you on that kind of bullshittery.

But I don't argue religion. You either believe or you don't, and I am not going to change your mind, either way. You won't change mine, either. The fact that I think God is a horse's ass is MY humble opinion, and the fact that he hasn't hit me with a lightning bolt after 51 years of saying that he is a horse's ass confirms my opinion that if he DOES exist, he is one incompetent sunofabitch.

Declaring yourself to be an atheist or an agnostic doesn't grant you license to slander or vilify others because they don't share your unbelief or skepticism. I get annoyed by it, I don't see any helpful purpose in it, and I personally refuse to engage in it.

That's why I don't argue religion.

I don't like being told what to do, but I ESPECIALLY don't like it when "God" gave some prick a message to pass on to me. If I were an omnipotent being, would I use Jerry Falwell as my messenger? Don't you think I could handle the message MYSELF, since I'm omnipotent?

Hell, I'll come see you PERSONALLY and burn a bush in your fucking bedroom to get your attention if I really want it. I'm GOD. I don't need no stinking Falwells to speak for me. I don't need ANYBODY to speak for me if I really want to make a point.

I've asked God to answer my prayers, but all he ever sent me were Falwells and Sharptons to pass along his message. I've been put on "hold" and sent off to deal with a God-bureaucrat instead of getting a straight answer from the top. THE MAN doesn't have time for me. He INVENTED time! But he can't break his schedule to talk to me? God is TOO BUSY? Sounds like a time-management issue to me.

Yeah, I'm asking for that lightning bolt. If God worked for ME, I'd fire his incompetent ass.

Jawja blue crab

Jennifer's dad owned a place down at Midway, Georgia, on Sunset Creek, about a quarter of a mile from the Jerico River. He had an old, ramshackle mobile home parked on a beautiful piece of land there, with a dock and floating dock on the creek. All the furniture inside was naugahide cheap-shit that could take a wet bathing suit with no problem, and he had a nice screen porch overlooking the marsh out back, where we sat and drank in the evenings.

We often went there on weekends to run the river, fish for trout, cast for shrimp and water ski. I learned to ride a kneeboard there one Saturday. There were three wimmen watching from the back of the boat when I came out of the water on that board for the first time, with my bathing suit around my ankles. The water almost sucked me nekkid. I was riding that thing with my buns in the wind and my dingle dangling in front.

I gave them the pump-fist "keep going" sign while I held onto the rope with one hand and repositioned my bathing suit with the other while going about 50 miles per hour down the river. I was the object of much wittery and clever observations when we got back to the dock. Wimmen can be catty sometimes.

One weekend my brother-in-law, Gary, took his boat to the river and we went out at low tide. Sunset Creek was very shallow at low tide and Gary's boat almost drew too much draft for us to get out of the creek, even with his motor trimmed as high as he could get it. Quinton was three years old at the time, and I got him to sit with me on the bow to level the craft help keep the prop out of the mud. Quinton was eating a strawberry pop-tart for breakfast that morning.

We went out and spent most of the day on the river and we had a fine old time, drinking beer and enjoying the salt water. We came back to the dock around 4:00 PM and decided that a crab boil would be a really good idea. We pulled up the traps around the dock and discovered about a half-dozen crabs. We knew we needed more crabs than that for a good, Midway-style crab-boil, so Gary and I went back out in the boat to rob some crab traps.

I'll give you a piece of advice if you live around the salt marshes of southeast Georgia. Robbing a commercial crabber's traps can get your ass shot dead. They'll cut you up and use your lifeless body to rebait the traps, too. I can't really blame them, because they make their livelihood from those traps, and you're messing with the man's groceries if you mess with his traps.

In this case, we had some family crab traps to raid, all identified with a yellow float. They all belonged to one of Jennifer's uncles, and we didn't believe that he would shoot us if we invited him to the crab boil. He didn't crab for a living. We stole about a bushel of crabs from him.

On the way back, we had pissed-off crabs running all over the boat as they snapped their claws and gave us the hairy-eyeball-on-stalks that only crabs can manage. We ran into a tremendous thunderstorm and rain fell in buckets. The drops were the size of marbles, and as Gary drove that boat through the storm, I felt as if someone were beating me with a hammer or shooting me with rubber bullets.

"Got-Damn!" Gary said. "This is fun, ain't it?" He was NOT serious.

We made it back, the storm went away and we boiled all the crabs. Every time Gary would crack one and pick some meat, he told Quinton, "I believe that THIS is the crab that ate your pop-tart this morning." Quinton immediately devoured the crab-meat as payback. That boy must have eaten a pound of crab meat that evening.

All of a sudden, Quinton stood up from the table and started crying. A terrible stench filled the air. I asked, "Quinton, what's the matter?"

"Daddy, I thought it was a poot, but I doo-dooed my pants!"

He sure enough did. That crab meat went through his young digestive tract the way Sherman went through Georgia. He had shit running down his legs and puddling around his bare feet. He was humiliated.

He ended up being hosed off the the back yard for the second time in his life. He has never eaten crab again.

I hope that he outgrows that fear of eating crab meat. It's too good to pass on forever.

(UPDATE: This sounds like a true story to me. I still know lots of crabbers. AND their girlfriends.)

February 02, 2008

Cooking seafood

I made a shrimp and cheese omelet for breakfast this morning, with a couple of pieces of bacon thrown in for color and taste. If you've never had one of those, you should try it sometime. That is one delicious omelet.

Shrimp is one of the most popular seafoods in the world and I constantly am amazed by the number of people who don't know how to cook shrimp. Shrimp may be the cockroaches of the ocean, but they are VERY GOOD to eat when they are prepared properly. I like them any way you can imagine serving them, but they need to be cooked correctly to taste right.

Most people over-cook shrimp. Shrimp turn tough and rubbery when you do that. When I boil shrimp, I put a pot of water on the stove, dose it with every seasoning in my spice cabinet, and bring the water to a boil. Then, I cut the heat off and dump the shrimp in the hot water. When the shrimp turn pink (which takes about two minutes) they are ready to eat. They'll absorb all of that seasoning very quickly.

When I fry them, I peel and bread a batch, then toss them in hot grease for about one minute. As soon as the breading starts to turn golden, the shrimp are done. Scoop 'em out of the pot and eat them with some cole slaw and corn on the cob.

When I sautee shrimp for a stir-fry or anything else I cook in my wok, the shrimp are the last ingredient to enter the mix. Have everything else ready when you toss the peeled and de-veined shrimp into a hot wok with some olive oil, garlic and real butter. Add a dollup of wine and shake and stir for about 90 seconds. The shrimp are done.

Cook them any longer, and you'll fuck them up.

Crab is a different story. I cook the Jawja Blue Crabs I catch for at least 15 minutes before I'll eat one. I know what kind of bait I caught those bastards on, and it was pretty disgusting. If shrimp are the cockroaches of the sea, crabs are the buzzards. They are nasty critters, but they taste good.

How many of my readers know how to pick a Jawja Blue Crab? Have you ever done it? It ain't easy.

Step #1: Once you've cooked the crab, peel his back shell off with your bare hands. Rake off all the gills and that orange shit that is called "crab-fat" by some people I know.

Step#2: Break the crab in half, sideways. Then, dig that lucious meat out of all the hideaways a crab stores it in. Tear the hind legs off correctly, and you end up with a big chunk of meat. Pull off the side-legs and you end up with more meat. Rip the body into quarters after that, and you have MORE meat.

Break off the claws and store them for later research. Claw meat is different from belly-meat on a crab.

Step#3: Collect about two pounds of that white belly-meat and make a crab stew. Invite some friends over to sample what you've done. You'll have a difficult time getting them to go home that night if you serve some beer with the meal.

I love seafood. Where I live, I can catch my own or buy it fresh off a boat. I've never eaten better seafood than I find right where I am. It's the good stuff, and if you live here, you learn to cook it right.

Filthy blog

A humble blogger between the coasts suggested that he wrote "filth" on his site. I was mightily offended by that assertion.

I WRITE FILTH! YOU DON'T! I use words that are considered impolite in civilized society and I spell them out. I don't type "a$$" when I mean "ASS." I don't type "F**K" when I mean "FUCK." I have a foul mouth and I write the way I speak. If you don't like it, BITE ME!

I've always been confused about why some words are "bad." FUCK is bad, but FART is just slightly off-color. STREET is perfectly legitimate, but SHIT is bad. Why is that? There really isn't a lot of difference in spelling.

"Sexual Intercourse" is a very scientific term used to describe basic fucking, and nobody is offended by "sexual intercourse." It's polite and socially acceptable. It also is ridiculous.

Try that kind of language as you're peeling a bra off a willing woman at midnight after $40 worth of margaritas. "I desire to have sexual intercourse with you."

BWHAHAHAHAAAAA!!! THAT AIN'T WHAT YOU SAY!

Naw, you say, "Oh, baby I am so hot for you. I want to fuck your brains out. I want to make you see Bejus and call his name out loud."

Try it. Ask a horny woman if she desires to have "sexual intercourse" with you. She'll look at you as if you just landed here from another planet.

Nibble her ear, tweak her nipples and talk dirty, and she's sizzling like spit on a griddle. You don't say, "I really would enjoy inserting my penis into your vagina." The terms "cock" and "pussy" are a lot more appropriate for that situation.

Family secret

My BC ex-wife has a deep, dark secret that she is more than willing to share with lots of people to demonstrate her toughness and willpower. She got pregnant when she was 16, in high school. She was Head Majorette in the marching band, Captain of the Beta Club and all-around good-looking girl.

Her daddy offered to pay for an abortion and even took her to Atlanta to have the procedure done before she changed her mind. She carried the child full term, birthed the baby and gave it up for adoption. She is proud of doing that.

I once was proud of her, too.

But I am not anymore. I am no fan of abortion. I think it is an evil form of birth control, but I don't want to outlaw it. People are going to have abortions, just the way people are going to smoke dope and gamble illegally. You can outlaw the shit out of that kind of behavior, but people are going to do it anyway. That's what people do. Passing laws to punish human nature is the way some self-righteous bastards get even for being short, ugly and never getting much pussy.

Do you think Henry Waxman would be such a prick if he were taller and got laid a lot? I think about such things.

But, I digress.

I'll tell you what my BC ex-wife learned from giving her baby up for adoption. When she was 16 years old, she learned that EVERYTHING is disposable. She learned to LOVE NO ONE. She trained herself to be a bloodless cunt.

She learned to be a heartless, unfeeling bitch, and I never realized it until she set her sights on me. I got steamrolled, but I should have known better. She learned to give away her own child. Why would she think twice about abandoning a husband?

She has no friends. She CLAIMS TO, but they never call and she never sees them. She CLAIMS to be tight with her family. Shit, her father is dead and the only reason she speaks to her mother is because she needs mama for babysitting purposes.

I once really believed that the woman was my partner, my lover and my best friend. I was blinded by her. All of my common sense went right out the window, and I fell in love. Bejus, but I have paid in spades for that mistake.

She dropped me like a hot rock and left scorched earth in her wake. When I needed her the most (I've got CANCER! So? Who are you?), she went out of her way to embarrass me in front of my true friends and hurt me as badly as she could. She showed up late for Quinton's soccer games with cum in her fucking hair and looked at me as if she didn't know me. She took me to court and raped me financially, then went to her dope-smoking, unemployed lover's house to celebrate.

I stopped calling my son when that unemployed, dope-smkoing asswipe answered the phone one day. In MY HOME!

She ditched him, too, when she got tired of having an unemployed, dope-smoking lover. She's got religion now and is very active in the church. Quinton hates that shit.

She'll ditch church as soon as it becomes inconvenient. Right now, it makes her look good. She likes that, but she'll go ahead and look bad if it suits her immediate purposes. That's what she does. The woman is a true bloodless cunt.

And she learned to be one in high school.

She almost beat me to death, too. I hope her adopted baby turned out okay. If so, he did a lot better than I did from her influence.

February 01, 2008

Friday five on a Sunday morning

(Or is it Sunday five on a Friday morning? I'm sooo confused.)Originally published June 22, 2003

Friday Five

1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short?

Straight, except for a tendency to develop a wave in the back when I let it grow long. I have a double-crown. It's a recessive gene thing.

2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime?

A lot of it fell out and never came back. The rest turned gray silver.

3. How do your normally wear your hair?

Proudly.

4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like?

Snakes. That would reflect the brain beneath the hair.

5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened?

I once let my son Quinton cut my hair with the new electric clippers I got for my birthday. He was six years old at the time. He shaved me almost bald and I let him do it. Then I realized that I don't look so good bald-headed. I have too many unsightly lumps and bumps on my skull. More recessive genes, I suppose.

Buying tampons

Attention, men: Have you ever gone to the store and bought tampons for your wife? Did you feel embarassed when you did it?

Well, I have, and I didn't.

I even fucked up once and grabbed a box that didn't pick up on the scanner at the cash register. The woman cashier announced over the intercom, "I need a price check on Tampax "Bleeding Like a Stuck Hog" tampons on register three!" I just stood there and grinned until some pimply-faced boy emerged from one of the aisles and announced the price at the top of his voice while he waved a box in his hand.

Maybe I need to clarify this story. My wife did NOT run out of tampons. But supplies were low, she was beginning the moon-cycle and I was going to the store anyway. That trip wasn't the first time I bought feminine hygene products. Hell, I bought some kind of "Wash Your Pussy With THIS and Smell Like Fresh Flowers Forever" douche for her on one of those trips. None of that shit ever bothered me.

But I always made her write down EXACTLY what she wanted. I didn't mind buying it for her, but I am as clueless as they come when I hit that feminine hygene aisle. I don't understand that shit, and left to my own devices, I might come home with a box of 20-mule-team Borax instead of that "Smell Like A Flower" douche. I might come home with a bale of hay instead of tampons.

Buying rubbers

The world certainly has changed since I was a teenager. When I wanted a condom back in the late 60s, I had to sneak into a bathroom in a bar and plug fifty cents into a machine that said, "FOR PREVENTION OF DISEASE ONLY!" to buy one. I wasn't going to pull a Summer of 42 and go ask a pharmicist for a box of Trojans. That idea was just too humiliating.

Now, I can buy any kind of condom I want in the fucking GROCERY STORE. They are right there on a stand-up display next to the anti-acid tablets and the Rogaine on aisle 18 at the Kroger's down the road from where I live. They have everything you possibly could want. They have ribbed, lubricated, extra-thick, ultra-sensitive, super-large, glow-in-the-dark and all in multiple colors.

I stopped in front of that display this week and had a crazy thought. Suppose I dumped every one of those things into my buggy and strolled up to the cash register? Would the cashier even bat an eye when she rang up my purchace? Or, would I get something of a hairy eyeball and feel the need to explain that I had a lively weekend planned?

Going parking

I'm an old fart now and I don't hang around a lot of teenagers. I wonder where they go on dates now to see how many bases they can cover? When I was a teenager, we had drive-in movies, which was a perfect place to fog up the windows and make out on the weekends. I also knew about a couple of prime parking places behind Memorial Stadium and on the Bacon Park Archery range.

Have you ever been laid in a car?

A bed is much nicer, but there's just something raw and exciting that I remember about screwing in a car. Maybe I remember those experiences so well because sex was new and slightly dangerous at the time, or maybe I'm seeing it all through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. Either way, I recall some of the best sex of my life happening on the seats of a 1968 Javelin. (The seats reclined. It was nice.)

As a student of human nature, I know full well that teenagers today are doing pretty much the same thing I did when I was young. He-ing and she-ing is going to happen when you combine horny young men with curious young wimmen. I just wonder where they go to do it anymore.

I'll bet that if I were a teenager in Effingham County today, I would know LOTS of good places to park in the woods around here.